Counting Africa’s largest bat colony

Every evening, bats fly from Kasanka National Park to feed in the surrounding countryside. Christian Ziegler / Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior - Once a year, a small forest in Zambia becomes the site of one of the world's greatest natural spectacles. In November, straw-colored fruit bats migrate from across the African continent to a patch of trees in Kasanka National Park. For reasons not yet known, the bats converge for three months in a small area of the park, forming the largest colony of bats anywhere in Africa. The exact number of bats in this colony, however, has never been known. Estimates range anywhere from one to ten million. A new method developed by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior has counted the colony with the greatest accuracy yet.