Bat Caves in Philippines

Bat Caves in Philippines is a famous tourist attraction in Philippines. Bats, like humans, are mammals. That is, their young is born alive and nourished by the mother. But unlike people, bats, particularly cave bats, hate the light and the noise. This is why they are also nocturnal, that is, they are awake at night and are asleep during the day. Come explores the Bat Caves in Philippines.

Bat Caves in Philippines are home to thousands of giant fruit bats. These caves are located on a rocky coast east of Yapak. Beside the home-trees of the Flying Foxes, one will find three distinct caves, the Crystal Cave, the Buslugan Cave, and the Bat Cave. The last one, the Bat Cave, shelters the cave bats. The exclusive features of the Bat Caves in Philippines are:

The cave is populated by giant fruit bats and cave bats that emerge from the caves to forage for food with the descent of the dusk.

They can be observed at twilight when thousands emerge from these caves and fly over White Beach in search of fruit on Boracay and other surrounding islands.

One must be extremely cautious and must avoid making noise that will disturb the bats. When disturbed, bats are known to fly about in frenzy.

Bat Cave is a series of small caves leading to the actual Bat Cave which is also easy to get to by land.

The waves usually pound against the rocks and swift currents can take one offshore.

Lobsters, sea snakes and of course, the bats overhead can make a captivating dive.

You may visit the Bat Caves in Philippines in the company of local guides, usually young village children, who can show you the best spots for viewing the nocturnal creatures.

Address of Bat Caves in Philippines: East of Yapak, Boracay Island
Boracay 5608 Philippines

Escape from the Bat Cave

On the hunt for their nightly meal, a swarm of Geoffroy's Rousette fruit bats bursts out of a Philippines .

In January 2011 a U.S. cave-mapping expedition stumbled upon an unusually high number of pregnant bats in the Monfort bat colony, in the country's southern Mindanao region. The bat species does not usually give birth in January, making the discovery a "big surprise" and forcing the scientists to halt their mapping project, according to Norma Monfort, founder and president of the Monfort Bat Cave & Conservation Foundation .

The cause of the bat baby boom is unknown, although Monfort suspects one factor may be that the cave  is protected from humans as an ecotourism site, which allows their numbers to grow. Monfort's family has owned the property for more than a hundred years.

In most of the bats' Southeast Asian range, people either hunt the mammals for food or disturb them while harvesting guano for fertilizer. If people enter a bat cave, nursing mothers can be easily startled, causing their pups to tumble to their deaths, Monfort said by email. (Interactive: Hear bat calls.)

But at Monfort cave, the 1.8-million-strong colony is not only thriving, in 2010 the Guinness Book of World Records deemed it the world's largest gathering of Old World fruit bats.

White Lady

In the 1980s caretakers of the Monfort property would tell stories of a "white lady, alleged to be the spiritual guardian of the bat cave," Monfort said. "It was said that she showed herself only to a very privileged few."

In 2010 Manila-based photographer Nelson Rivera joined the lucky minority when he captured shots of this rare albino bat—later nicknamed "Blanca Bella," or "beautiful white."

"She was photographed pregnant last summer, then seen carrying a regularly colored … pup, which disappeared after five weeks," Monfort said, adding that the young bat must have learned how to fly.

Albinism in bats is rare but has been recorded before, including in five species of Indian bat, she added.