Protecting caves for bats or bats for caves?
Bats have long been known as the cave-dwellers par excellence. When one thinks about caves, the first image that comes to mind is that of a dark place full of stalactites and stalagmites, with lots of bats touching our faces with their sinister wings. Such an image is reinforced by the pictures of millions of Tadarida brasiliensis emerging at dusk from New Mexico caves, or the hybernacula occupied by thousands of torpid bats in some temperate caves. However, as one will promptly learn from Brazilian caves, such huge concentrations of the so-called bat caves (which many authors state as being the typical caves) are an exception.