Taming Wild Bats for Photography
Merlin Tuttle founded Bat Conservation International (BCI), an organization devoted to research, education and conservation of bats in 1982, and has devoted his career to studying, photographing and conserving bats. His photographs cover bats from every continent where they are found, documenting nearly every aspect of their behavior as never before seen. These images have been featured in five National Geographic articles and in thousands of other publications worldwide, having great influence on public appreciation of bats.
This video reveals the key role of taming bats as a basis for Dr. Tuttle’s amazing success in getting bats to perform naturally in front of his camera and high speed flashes. Many of the scenes in the award-winning documentary “The Secret World of Bats”, which originally aired on CBS Television in 1992, would not have been possible without this skill that Merlin has with bats.
Like most others who handle wild mammals, he has been vaccinated against rabies, though he is seldom bitten. All his bats are released where captured within a few days or weeks. Merlin strongly recommends against handling or attempting to keep bats as pets by untrained amateurs.
In his more than 55 years of working with bats, he has never been attacked or bitten unprovoked by a bat. He has found them typically to rank among our planet’s most gentle and intelligent mammals. To see more photos and learn more about Merlin’s continuing work, visit www.MerlinTuttle.org
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