How Many Species of Bats are There in Washington State?

While there are over a thousand different species of bats in the world, only 15 of those live in Washington. Bats eat a lot of insects and are actually our friends. The only problem is, if they start nesting at your house near a roof peak or something like that, they can be messy. You know, bat guano. Plenty of it.

According to batsnorthwest.org, bats are not even really blind like everyone thinks. They do have the ability to echo-locate their food with a form of radar, but all bats have some form of eyesight.

Vampire bats are probably the most feared bats, even though the giant fruit bats found in the rain forests are the creepiest ones. There aren't any vampire bats in the United States but there used to be. That was a thousand years ago so no worries now. No vampire bats are found north of Mexico these days. There are some vampire bats in the state of Washington, but they are in the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.