BATS AND COCKROACHES

Just watched another episode of Planet Reality with my kids that we had not seen before they went to bed. I love that DVD set.  This episode was on caves.  There's a cave on the island of Borneo- the largest cave in the world- which has 3 million bats in it.  Every night for they all leave the cave in swarms-so many that it takes over 2 hours for them to exit.

In the process, I found out that several things eat bats.  I didn't know anything ate bats.  But evidently there are snakes that cling to the walls and catch bats as they fly and peregrine falcons that hunt bats in the air.   Owls do too evidently.   Go figure.

What's weirder than birds eating bats?  The fact that the ground in the cave is alive with millions and millions of cockroaches that feed on a mountain, 100 meters high, of bat dung. Oh now that makes cave exploration in Borneo officially something I'm not interested in.   That makes Indiana Jones' snake floor seem like something I'd rather walk through.  

Makes my back twinge just letting the image play through my memory.