They fly with their fingers, eat half their weight in food every night, see with their ears, and sleep upside down. Check out some of the world's coolest bats while they're roosting at the McAllen International Museum.

Turn your ideas about bats upside down. Discover that bats are amazing creatures that are helpful to people and the environment. Find out what you have in common as you try to fly like a bat, hear like a bat, and hang out with the rest of the gang.

The McAllen International Museum invites you to Bats in my World. Come fly like a bat (with the help of a chromakey video and bat-wing costumes) and hang like a bat under the Congress Avenue Bridge, home of the world's largest urban bat colony. You can also "hear" like a bat with some giant bat ears and find out how much food you would have to consume to actually eat like a bat! Find out that bats can be found almost everywhere around the world. Wander through places that bats hang out underground in caves, high in barn rafters, inside cracks in noisy bridges, and even in your back yard in specially designed bat houses. You can even see 1 million bats all at once.

Produced by the Austin Children's Museu0 in cooperation with Bats Conservation International, Bats in my World will be on display at the McAllen International Museum through September 9th. For more information, call Sally Mendiola at (956) 682-1564, ext. 111.

Come hang with the bats before they fly away!

Area Component Descriptions

Bat Barn. Walk inside the old, rustic barn and discover who is living there. Help a mother bat find her pup with your nose and view a photographic progression of a bat's growth from a pup to an adult. Discover who is living up in the barn's cupola and who is trying to reach them. Seek and find bat predators (a cat, raccoon, hawk, owl, and snake) hiding in the barn and listen to the sounds they make. Discover how many bats fit in one square foot of a nursery colony by touching 500 shaker peg bats. Turn the "Eco Wheel" and learn what the rural habitat would be like without bats. Crawl through an exit and enter the cave.

Dr. Chira's Office. Visit the Doctor's office and learn how bats live. Dr. Chira P. Tera is a Chiroptologist (one who studies bats). Follow her through her cave office and explore how these mammals compare to humans. Meet Dr. Chira's family and friends and learn about some of their special characteristics and adaptations in her "Family and Friends Family Tree." Spread your arms out to compare yourself to a bat's wing span and then compare your hand to a mechanical bat's wing. Discover what bats eat at the Bat Diner, and then learn how many crates of fruit you would have to eat every night if you were a fruit bat. Try on a giant pair of bat ears to hear a whisper. Study a real bat skeleton, play with a magnet shape puzzle to create your own bat, and see one million bats.

"Downtown, Everything's Great!" Urban Bats. Come see the city bats! "Hang" out and fly (with the help of a chromakey video camera) with the bats that live under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, (the largest urban bat colony in the world). Echolocate your friends and family with an audio echolocator. Look inside a real bat house and peek inside a barrel to see who lives there.

Bats 'Round the World. Travel to different habitats and explore where bats live. Desert. Pollinate flowers like desert bats and toss beanbags to pollinate giant cactus flowers. Turn the "Eco Wheel" and learn what this habitat would be like without bats. Rain Forest. Catch a flying insect or catch a fish like specially adapted bats. Send a package via Bat Parcel Service (BPS) to your favorite bat worldwide. Seek and find bats living under a leaf or behind tree bark in the forest. Turn the "Eco Wheel" to learn what this habitat would be like without bats.