If you’ve ever enjoyed coffee, tomatoes, corn, bananas, mangoes, walnuts, chocolate, tequila or mezcal, you may just owe bats a thank-you.
While bats are often the subject of fear and scorn – they’re fixtures in Halloween decor and haunted-house imagery, and are frequently portrayed as harbingers of doom – their presence is often a sign of a thriving ecosystem. Some of our favorite food and drinks would be much less plentiful, or even nonexistent, without them.
‘Hey, I grew that’: the Native American school that’s decolonizing foodwaysRead moreBats play a few significant roles in human food systems. Some serve as a form of natural pest control by feeding on insects that can destroy crops like corn and pecans. Others pollinate species like bananas, coconuts, avocados and agave, a role many people associate with bees and butterflies. And some fruit-eating bats help maintain wild plant populations through seed dispersal – think mangoes, cashews, figs and almonds.