Bats don't have back bones - do they?

We went to collect some grounded bats that had appeared in an office at a hospital. The call had come because there were 15 bats in the office when someone entered the office in the morning. They opened a window and locked the room. When we got there to rescue them there were only 6 hanging on the curtains, the others presumably having flown out of the window.

As usual with these things everyone wanted to see the bats and be told about them. One gentleman who was dressed in what appeared to theatre overalls was very animated about looking for bats. He was clearly interested in wildlife and had seen bats at some point. He did however let himself down by saying that ‘bats don’t have back bones, do they?’ Quite where he’d got the idea from we never knew but he was convinced that bats did not have a back bone. How else could they crawl into such small spaces!

We had to explain that the majority of the bat that you see is fur and that the body underneath is really very small. This is the reason they can get into such small spaces, not the ability to be a slug! People get the strangest ideas.

The bats were taken back that night and released. Hopefully they won’t return to the hospital.