Unknown to many city dwellers, the typical urban landscape can also play home to actual wildlife. As unusual as it may seem, cities are full of animals and creatures one would not expect to find outside the wild or cages of a zoo.
They can be found anywhere from underground sewage systems to local parks, giving literal meaning to the phrase ‘urban jungle.’
The Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Day Excursions explores one of Houston’s many hidden wildlife treasures: the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony, located on Allen Parkway and Waugh Drive.
Overlooking Houston’s Buffalo Bayou, the Waugh Drive Bridge is home to a bat colony of over 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats.
‘Mexican free-tailed bats are just one of the 11 kinds of bats that live in the Houston area, with 32 species total in all of Texas,’ Dan Brooks, HMNS curator of vertebrate zoology and guide of the bat excursion, said.
Brooks has studied bats all around the world.
‘They can fly as far as Corpus Christi in one night,’ Brooks said.
Around 8 p.m., visitors can observe the bats from a viewing platform located near the Waugh Street Bridge as they prepare for their nighttime flight. Visitors can also move closer to the bridge or stand directly underneath to get a better look at the colony’s habitat.
There, they will see the bats securely residing in almost every crevice, crack and hole under the bridge. As they prepare for their flight, the bats squeak with excitement. At sunset, the bats depart from the bridge, flying at high speeds in groups.
Mexican free-tailed bats derive their name from their tail-like appendages, which are separate from their actual tails, but protrude from the end of their bodies.
According to information signs posted along the viewing platform, Houston’s colony of Mexican free-tailed bats dwells underneath the Waugh Drive Bridge year-round. Their diet consists of insects, and they leave the bridge to feed on approximately two and half tons of insects each night, which helps to control insect populations.
The largest Mexican free-tailed bat colony can be found in San Antonio in the Bracken Cave.
The Waugh Drive Bridge Mexican free-tailed bat colony is just one of the many wildlife surprises one will find within the city of Houston.
