We were walking down into a cave, near Khao Yai park. The air clung to my skin, and breathing became less pleasant. This was a cave used by Buddhist monks for meditation. I expected that this would make it feel better, calmer, more spiritual. But the shrines had disappointing, tacky Buddhas, plastic flowers and badly-painted Hindu gods, glowing blue in fluorescent light. I couldn’t imagine spending time meditating here, for one minute.
We walked further into the cave, and I heard a shhhhushhhy, fluttery sound. I concentrated on this, and gasped when I realised there were dozens of bats, flying every which way through the cave, sometimes centimetres from my nose. “Don’t worry,” said Tommy, our guide. “They never, never run into you because of their sonar.” I decided I had no choice but to take Tommy at his word.
Tommy shone his flashlight up on the roof of the cave, and there were countless bats, their wings drawn up around their bodies. Some were sheltering little baby bats, their eyes shining in the light. Tucked against their mother, who was herself tucked into a crevasse, these tiny creatures were shivering slightly, protected by the translucent casing of their mother’s wings.
I was reminded of the time a small brown bat was trapped in our cottage. I screamed in the dark as I felt it swoop across my face, waking my dad in the room downstairs. With the lights on, the little bat clung to the bedcovers. I was still terrified. My dad caught it in a pail. We looked down at it, examining its light furry body, its delicate little wings. It was chirping and shivering. I realised then it was probably scared. We let it out into the night air, and it flapped away.
I didn’t get used to being in the cave, but I felt calmer.
After about 30 minutes of exploring the cave, seeing and sensing many more bats, we climbed out, and into the truck. Tommy drove us to the hills. These rose above endless cornfields, now lit golden in the late afternoon sun.
We drove up a red dirt road and stopped. Tommy said that we were below a series of caves, which were full of millions of bats. Their guano was extremely valuable, at about 1 dollar a kilogram. The competition to have the rights to collect the guano, which is used as fertiliser, was stiff. Tommy assured us we wouldn’t want to go into these caves because of their smell. We were content to look up at them, and take in the beauty of the landscape.
“The show is beginning,” said Tommy, as he gestured to the sky.
And in the air was a thick, black ribbon, streaming out of the cave. Hundreds of thousands of Frilly-Lipped bats were making their regular evening sortie out of the caves, and towards the shadowy hills of Khao Yai park. The stream sailed into the distance, the bats perfectly aligned as they dove down, and up, and down into a corkscrew spiral.
Tommy explained that they flew in formation this way to scare away birds, which were waiting to pluck them out of the sky. This snaking line of bats would continue for a full hour. He said they would stay out and eat insects for four or five hours, and then return individually to the caves.
This sight was truly wondrous. Here are some photographs and videos below. You can hear the flapping wings.
