Bat Coloring Pages

• Fruit bat: also called a flying fox, with big eyes, a long snout and a wingspan that can reach five feet
• Little brown bat: a small North American bat that catches insects in the air at night
• Honduran white bat: a tiny, fluffy white bat with a yellow nose that shelters under folded leaves
• Bumblebee bat: the smallest bat in the world, weighing less than a penny
• Roosting bat: hangs upside down by its feet and wraps its wings around its body
• Mother and pup: a baby bat is called a pup, and it clings to its mother while it is small
• Halloween bats: simple shapes with pumpkins and a full moon

Bats are the only mammals that truly fly. A bat's wing is a hand: thin skin stretched between very long finger bones, with a thumb sticking out at the top. Bats aren't blind. Many of them also find their way in the dark by echolocation, making high squeaks and listening for the echoes. A single small bat can eat hundreds of insects in an hour, which is good news for farmers and for anyone eating outdoors. Other bats drink nectar and pollinate plants such as agave and wild bananas.

Real bats are brown, gray, reddish or black, and their wings are darker and smoother than their furry bodies. Color the body with short strokes of brown, then fill the wings with flat dark gray and add a lighter line along each finger bone. Fruit bats often have a golden or orange collar of fur. For Halloween pages, anything goes: purple bats on an orange sky look great. If the sky is dark, color it with the side of a crayon and leave a pale ring around the moon.