Cauldron of bats

Have you visited a bat cave? I've always been curious how they look, how they sleep, hang, or just their place. I've seen bats at night sometimes, flying from trees to trees... getting their juicy fruits. :D But I've never seen a bat cave until recently.

The cave has a lot of entrances where we could safely view the bats from a distance. You can't enter the caves cos aside from the fact that the bats need some protection, it is also dangerous for humans. First of all, their poop smells so bad. Next, there are a lot of snakes there too and the cave is really big.

See those black stuff that cover the walls?

They're all bats. :D

We were maybe 15 feet away from the entrance of this one so we can't really see from the inside of the cave. When I viewed it from my camera, I was stoked to see those aren't black walls but they're all bats. XD

Really good thing that I bought my zoom lens with me.

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Do you wonder why they sleep upside down? Apparently, their legs are not that strong to be able to takeoff from the ground, so it's more efficient for them to sleep hanging. With their upside down position, they are able to just drop and fly immediately when they're threatened.

Pretty cool!

Look at them resting after a night of hard work - saving the world. :3 Pollinating so trees can continue to grow for the future.

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A group of bats is called a cauldron. They are also called a colony or a cloud. Cauldron sounds the baddest.

Then I caught this dude, uhh, cleaning itself. :D

There are around 2 million+ bats here. It's crazy how many and I'm glad they are preserving it.

Why you flying around??? Go to sleep! :D

The smell of the previous caves where quite nothing since I guess they were a lot of females there and we were not that close. But when we got to the males section... it smelled so freaking BAD!

Males are more smelly and besides they mostly eat durian so combine that and you will have a really smelly man cave. Like the room of a WOW player. :PPP

Maybe also because the cave was a bit lower than the viewing area, hence the smell goes upward and thus to us. It was really bad for me though maybe cos I'm more sensitive to smell as well but it was so bad that I had to cover my nose the entire time I was close to the area.

I just held my breath for a long time and took a few pics haha and moved on.

They don't seem to mind their smell. XD

Bats are so important to our ecosystem. In fact, they were the ones who planted most of the trees in the surrounding area. They for sure planted the others too.

I'm really glad there are people who conserve and protect their habitat and I hope it stays that way. Love the bats. :D