Bats and the Resurrection

Australia is home to a diverse range of bat species. There are approximately 90 known species of bats in Australia. These bats belong to different families and are categorized into two main groups: the microbats and the megabats. Some of them roost in caves. 

Microbats are generally smaller in size and often use echolocation for navigation and hunting prey. Megabats, on the other hand, are larger fruit bats that primarily feed on fruits, nectar, and pollen. Bats play important roles in ecosystems, such as pollinating plants and controlling insect populations. Cave-roosting bats are vulnerable to disturbances, and conservation efforts often focus on protecting both the bats and their roosting sites.

A cave dwelling bat’s life revolves around eating and sleeping. It has three ways of catching insects and engages in two forms of sleep. The least-used method of catching insects is with its mouth. The second is to net them in the cupped membrane of its tail and then seize them with its teeth. But usually, the creature simply knocks an insect into its cupped tail, then bends its head and seizes it with its teeth.

In the laboratory it has been demonstrated that bats can eat 175 mosquitoes in 15 minutes, and 66 moths or 5,000 gnats (small flying insects) in less than two hours. They are therefore very effective agents in the control of harmful insects.

When winter comes there aren’t enough insects to keep the bat alive at its normal level of activity, so it may migrate north to areas where there are more insects, or it may hibernate.

When the choice is hibernation, breathing slows from 200 to 23 times a minute and can occur as seldom as once every five minutes. The heartbeat drops from averages of 400 to 700 beats per minute down to seven or ten times per minute. The bat occasionally wakes from its deathlike sleep to drink or eat insects present in its cave, but it does not leave the cave until spring. No one knows how it knows that spring has come, or what wakes it up. But God has caused it to now spring is here.

These characteristics of bats are somewhat like those people living here on earth waiting for Jesus to come. We eat and sleep and will survive the spiritual winter and be ready to meet Jesus in the eternal spring, either by living until that day or by sleeping in Jesus until the resurrection. For the Christian, death is more like hibernation. The creator who wakes the bat in spring, will awaken each of us to a fantastic new life that is beyond our dreams. “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves…” 1 Thessalonians 4:16 NLT