Personal story and experience

Since I was little I was interested in bats. Because I am a caver, I am frequently seeing bats in caves. But, what I found unusual was that there are bats that can live in captivity.


 A friend of mine that is biologist found an injured bat in the city. The bat had a broken wing and a running sore. It was incapable of flight and feeding itself. In order not to die, she took it home and fed it with fishing bait.  After 2 weeks she visited me. She brought the bat too. Its injury wasn’t so bad, but he still couldn’t fly. I opened the box where it was and I took it into my hands. It was a very nice female of Nyctalus noctula.

 The following 3 days my friend stayed with us while I took care of the little bat. I was very excited about it and I wished I could keep the bat. Because my friend had to work and she also traveled a lot, she couldn’t take care of the bat.  So that she decided to give me the bat. From then (December 2011) I took care of a bat. Meanwhile, she became  a member of my family.

 Since I have it, I took some observations about it’s behavior, it’s mood and even it’s lifestyle.
The first big major thing that happened was that I was with it to a doctor. He operated it. The surgery held about 15 minutes. The bat was anaesthetized  with a mask. It felt asleep  in few minutes. The doctor cut a little from the bat’s bone and introduced into the rest of the bone a thin metal rod. (Bat’s bones are empty inside - the same as bird’s bones). This bar has the goal to  fix the bone and to keep it in the right position. After the surgery the  bat recovered immediately (about few minutes). The doctor remarked how incredible the bats are. They are the mammals that react the best at the anesthesia.


After the surgery, the bat  behaved normally. Moreover, it was more active than before. So active, that all nights long it made a lot of noise in it’s box. One night it also crunched from the box and the books over it (usually I put books over the box, in order not to lose the bat- sometimes it break out) and it went away. In the morning I searched it through the house but I didn’t find it. I hoped that it will appear the next night - thing that really happened while my family wasn’t home next night and inside the house was quite. We found the bat very close from the place where his box was a night before. We think that it was hiding in a narrow space and it came back when she was hungry.



The most important thing that happened to my bat was in the middle of march. I was staying in the room near the box where it was and I heard some unusual low noise. It was like a roundelay. I have never heard that sound before, but I guessed what it was before opening the box. It  gave birth to 2 cubs. (For the ones that wonder how it could become pregnant, the answer is simple: It mated/pared before it was hurt, when she lived in its natural environment.
Firstly I didn’t see the cubs because they were hanged under her and because she was very protective and didn’t let me touch her.  After a while I saw the first real evidence of their presence. The bat-mother was blocking sight but something was clearly moving under its wing.  When we finally saw the bats they were in the same time ugly and very cute. They haven’t had hair and all their body was covered just with bat’s specific skin. 

The birth position

The first real sign that under the bat-mother was at least one baby

The bat-mother and the first-born cub

Unfortunately, the bat-mother soon became unintrested. In the wildlife the females are helping each other. I think that it was mother for the first time and it didn’t know how to carry it off well with the two cubs, so that they died,unfortunately,2 days later.
After some weeks, when I considered that the bat is out of any risks, I took it to the doctor again. He told me the bat recovered well after the surgery, even that it would never coul fly again and that maybe after 8 month from surgery, the doctor could take out the metal rot from the wing of the bat.




The loss of the cubs was sad and disappointing for me but I will continue to fight for those little mammals, and try to help people understand, respect and help them.