Watch bats emerge from Bracken Cave tonight

If you can’t make it to Bracken Cave in person, you can watch the nightly bat emergence via a Facebook Live event tonight. Photo by Pam LeBlanc

If you can’t get to Bracken Cave near San Antonio to watch the emergence of millions of bats in person, you can do the next best thing – watch them swirl out of the ground by a live streaming event.

Bat Conservation International and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department will host a Facebook Live event beginning at 8:20 p.m. tonight on the BCI and TPWD Facebook pages.

Biologists will answer questions live from the audience and talk about the bats. Biologists will also discuss the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act and how it will benefit species of greatest conservation need, like Texas bats, according to a press release from the Parks Department.

Bat Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy  co-manage the 3,462-acre Bracken Cave Preserve, home to the largest bat colony in the world. More than 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) live in the cave, and emerge each evening during the summer to eat insects.