There are 17 species of bats that live in the UK, and we have 16 of these living on the Mendip Hills. The biggest, and rarest, of these is the greater horseshoe bat, which live in the caves that riddle the limestone of Mendip.
All our UK bats are insect eaters (insectivorous), and, depending on the size of the bat, they eat lots of different kinds. Our smallest bats are the pipistrelles, they may be only the size of a 50p piece, but they are mighty hunters and can eat up to 3000 midges in a single night!
The greater horseshoe is much larger, with a wingspan of 40cm. This bat likes to eat big beetles, like dung or chafer beetles, large moths, like the orange underwing species, but it will eat flies too. Bats love to hunt along woodland edges and hedge lines, where insects congregate.
Bats are the only mammal to have achieved true flight, and this has helped them to be the one mammal family found on all the continents, other than the Antarctic.
A bat’s wings are a highly adapted hand, with a special membranous ‘skin’, called the patagium, stretched between the fingers and across to its body.