Filmmakers Capture Footage From the Ground as Thousands of Bats Emerge From Bracken Cave

Documentary filmmaker Kelly Sweet and a team from National Geographic team lay on the floor at the entrance of the famous Bracken Caves in Comal County, Texas to capture footage of thousands upon thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats emerging like a tornado in search of food. We previously wrote about the Bracken Caves as seen through a GoPro Hero.

Kelly Sweet joined a National Geographic film crew at the cave near San Antonio, Texas, to film this feeding frenzy. Sweet was lying on the ground right in front of the cave entrance so the bats wouldn't crash into her. "Once millions of bats are coming out, they're flooding out so there's not open space in the cave. You could not safely stand there because they will fly into you and get stuck in your hair." The bats leave the cave to consume massive amounts of moths and other insects-nursing mother bats will eat their body weight in insects every night. And there's a whole ecosystem that depends on these bats as a food source; many of the baby bats won't survive after they emerge from the cave