A new study sounds a warning about wild bats used in decorations sold online.
Scientists are sounding the alarm about taxidermied bats commonly sold online in frames, jars, coffins, jewelry, and more. It’s a wild animal trade that has flown under the radar and that poses risks to the bats and potentially to the people who handle them, according to a study recently published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.
While bats of all kinds are showing up for sale online, the study homes in on one particularly appealing species — Kerivoula picta, also called the painted woolly bat. They’re bright orange critters with striking black and orange wings. Their natural vibrancy might be what makes them in demand for Halloween decorations. The term “goth” also popped up in almost 15 percent of Kerivoula picta listings included in the study. But the bats are likely harvested illegally, the researchers write, which could lead to their populations dwindling in the wild.
Researchers combed through listings on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon and found bat carcasses used in even more unusual ways than they expected. There was a white lace garter adorned with a bat’s body, another bat hanging upside down from a choker necklace, and another bat affixed to a comb as a hair accessory.
“It is disturbing,” says Nistara Randhawa, a colead author of the study and a data scientist and epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis. “They should not sell these bats online.”
Randhawa and her colleagues found 856 listings for products containing bat remains after searching for Kerivoula picta and related terms like “painted bat” or “orange bat” between October and December of 2022. They couldn’t determine exactly how many bats had actually been harvested or sold since sellers don’t necessarily share how many bats they have in stock and can replenish their inventories. In the end, the researchers believe their findings “vastly” underrepresent the problem.
Around a quarter of the listings they identified were of actual Kerivoula picta. They counted at least 284 individual bats from pictures in those listings. (Some items contained more than one bat.) The rest of the listings contained other kinds of bats. Buying any kind of taxidermied bat is harmful, even if the seller claims that they were harvested sustainably, the researchers contend in their paper:
We refute any assertion that the online bat trade is ethical. Again, statements that bats were captive-bred are absurd—bat farms are nonexistent—and it would be impossible for suppliers to find bats that have died naturally in the kind of condition and numbers needed to supply an ornamental trade. These bats were hunted.
They found the most bat listings on Etsy, 86 percent of the 856 listings. eBay and Amazon were each responsible for 13 and 1.6 percent of the listings, respectively. Etsy didn’t respond to The Verge by the time this story was published. Amazon asked for example listings to “investigate.” The Verge provided listings this morning, which still appeared to be up at the time of publication.
“We have strict policies and guidelines in place to regulate the listing of animal products on our platform and promote the protection of wildlife,” eBay spokesperson Scott Overland says in an email to The Verge. He says eBay prohibits the sale of all bats, “whether live, dead, or taxidermy.”
Sellers on Etsy and eBay shipped their products from 15 different countries, but more than 60 percent of them were shipped from the US. Painted woolly bats, however, make their homes across Asia. The species is listed as “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with trade suspected as one factor driving a decline in their numbers globally.
There is a small risk of spreading disease, a threat that entered the spotlight during the covid-19 pandemic. While it’s unlikely that the person purchasing a taxidermied bat would catch something, there’s greater risk for whoever harvested that bat in the wild.
The new study recommends including the species in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species Fauna to more systematically monitor trade across borders. In the US, advocates have also started a legal petition to protect Kerivoula picta under the Endangered Species Act.
Unlike other species of bats that live in large groups, individual painted bats roost alone among leaves. They live relatively long, solitary lives (more than a decade), and are monogamous during breeding season. Like most other bats, they usually give birth to just one pup each year, which means poaching can pose an especially grave threat to conservation efforts. Among the decor sold online, the researchers could tell whether a female bat had a pup by recognizing signs in her body that she was lactating.
“Seeing that, I would imagine, ‘Well, here’s this female that was collected — where’s her pup? … It was probably crying for its mother,” says Joanna Coleman, colead author of the study and an assistant professor of biology at Queens College, CUNY. She found she could assess about 50 listings in a day and then “emotionally I was just done,” she says.
Working with bats in the wild, Randhawa fondly remembers them drinking mango juice before being released. “It was just lapping it up like a dog,” she says. (Painted woolly bats, on the other hand, eat insects.) “Maybe there’s a bit of a disconnect between the animal living in the wild versus seeing the animal in a frame. If there can just be that connection to realize that what you see and think is probably cool in front of you — there is a whole life that it was living.” Bats also play important roles in the wild, like dispersing seeds, pollinating plants, and controlling pest populations.
Conservation groups also ask well-meaning bat enthusiasts not to purchase any items containing real bats, bat parts, or skeletons. After all, there are also plenty of faux bats on the market to collect.
