Living in Nevada we don't see a lot of moths or have many run ins with mosquitoes. We do however have an abundant supply of cockroaches and scorpions! Ask anyone that lives in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Texas even parts of southern California and they will agree, desert cockroaches and scorpions are the hardest bugs to get rid of once they are in your neighborhood!
Growing up in Canada I loved bats for taking care of all the black flies, mosquitoes and other blood sucking insects that would torment my summers by the lake. With out bats I would not have been able to survive, let alone enjoy, my vacations at the cottage. I used to watch the bats fly around the forests edge by the lake swooping down and gobbling up all the bugs! It was great.
Now living in scorpion country Nevada, until recently, I never knew that some species of bats specifically eat scorpions and cockroaches by the dozen!
The Pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus), unlike most bats which hunt for flying insects, feeds almost entirely from the ground and captures little, if any, prey while in flight. With their big cute ears they can detect insects simply by listening for footsteps.
After swooping down upon its prey, the pallid bat carries the insect to a safe perch to enjoy its meal. Its most common prey include cockroaches, crickets, beetles, grasshoppers, and even scorpions. What I find amazing is the pallid bat is actually immune to a scorpion's sting!
Pallid bats make their homes in rock crevices, buildings, bat houses and bridges in arid desert regions. They are know to live across the western part of North America, from Mexico and the southwestern United States north through Oregon, Washington, and western Canada.
The Pallid bat is just one of 1,100 species of bat. I am sure there are more species of bat that also eat gross ground bugs, but with their cute ears, hungry appetite for the bugs I despise and their strong desire to live in my bat houses, I would have to rank the Pallid bat as my personal favorite bat!
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