Stunning footage of an “endless river” of bats emerging from a cave in Mexico has gone viral with more than 5 million views racked up on Twitter alone in just 24 hours.
Watch this endless river of bats emerging from this cave
The footage was shot at Cueva de los Murciélagos in Mexico. Lonely Planet says that “at sundown every evening some two to three million bats swirl up from the depths of a dry cenote, forming a tornado of fur and wings that’s a surreal experience.”
Science Daily reports that “researchers have discovered that bats use a magnetic substance in their body called magnetite as an “internal compass” to help them navigate.”
The biggest colony of bats in the world is thought to be at Bracken Cave near San Antonio, Texas, home to more than 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis).
The bats are a migratory species, and their nightly emergence is described as “nightly emergence is a jaw-dropping, life-changing experience — one that can become a bucket-list item for nature lovers worldwide that inspires people to support bat conservation.”