Austin is “Batty”

Austin, Texas, is known as one of the most dynamic cities in the southern United States. Not only is it the Lone Star State’s capital, but it is home to the University of Texas, and is one of the nation's top centers for computer technology. One of its mottos is "Keep Austin Weird," for its many attractions, neighborhoods, and people.

One of Austin's top tourist attractions, however, has nothing to do with its people. Living within the eaves and crevices of the Ann W. Richards Congress Street Bridge is the world's largest urban bat colony. An estimated 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats live underneath the bridge in downtown Austin. Hundreds of people gather in the summer and early fall each night to watch the incredible horde of bats take flight in the dim evening light to feed. The Austin bats are thought to eat an incredible ten to twenty thousand pounds of insects every night, including many that are considered pests such as moths and grasshoppers. The bats also consume a huge amount of mosquitoes. The bats, which can reach speeds of sixty miles per hour in flight, feed for about an hour. The colony of bats doubles in size in June, when female bats give birth to a single pup. Within six weeks, the pups learn to fly and feed on their own, which gives rise to even more incredible emergences. In October or early November, when the weather turns colder, the bats migrate south.

The bats have become such an important symbol of Austin, that the city built the Statesman Bat Observation Center to give visitors a dedicated place to observe the incredible scene. Over 100,000 people visit the observation center each year, which pumps more than ten million dollars into the local economy. In this way, the city of Austin has successfully turned a wonder of nature into an economic asset.