26K views · 175 reactions | Stand inside a swarm of the largest bat colony in the world!  | HLN | Facebook

🚨LARGEST BAT COLONY IN THE WORLD CALLS AUSTIN, TX HOME?!?🚨This is a FREE travel bucket list item you’re going to want to save for your next trip to Austin. The Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge hosts an estimated 1.5 MILLION Mexican free-trailed bats who raise an estimated 750,000 pups annually. The bats began to call the Bridge home in the early 1980s shortly after it was renovated. Back then, many people feared bats, and so @batconservationinternational and other bat educators worked ha

Austin is a town of many mascots. The bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge. The salamanders of Barton Springs. Even the sneaky grackle has become a beloved icon. This is not a story about those animals. This is a story about alligators. Gators are not something that people often associate with Austin, but they do appear in our local mythology. It was one of those appearances that prompted listener Jade Florence to reach out to #ATXplained with a question. Florence is a wildlife biologist. She s