The facts you didn't know about BATS!

Few creatures scare people more than bats ... and for no good reason, it turns out! Barry Petersen has the cold hard facts:

Evening in Austin, Texas ... where nightlife is about wildlife.

At times a million and a half bats emerge from under the Congress Avenue Bridge.

BATS! That many of us fear.

One woman explained, "When I was little I was told they go in your hair."

But in truth, bats are sadly misunderstood.

Bat Fact One: Forget the attack myth, says Austin's own bat man - Merlin Tuttle, who founded Bat Conservation International.

"I spent hundreds of hours in caves surrounded by literally millions of bats at a time," he said. "I've never been harmed by a bat. Not once."

Bat Fact Two: Bats are NOT dirty. They're extremely clean.

Dianne Odegard rehabs wounded bats in her home. "They groom themselves like cats do," she explained. "They have these little hairs on their feet that they use kind of like a brush or a comb."

From ancient storytellers to Hollywood myth makers, bats get a bad rap.

But bats went from creepy to camp in the '60s with the TV show "Batman."

And Caped Crusader Adam West and his Batmobile are still stars at the Austin Bat Festival. (You just knew they would have a bat festival.)

"It's something that's just extremely unique to Austin," said one woman in her bat costume. "And it's cool!"

These little bats are big business - generating an estimated ten to twelve million tourist dollars a year, especially for souvenirs, which is why in this town you have sweet dreams if you sleep on a pillow that says "Batty about Austin."

... Which brings us to Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who told us the Bat is Austin's official animal.

But Bat Fact Three is no joke: Bats save American consumers billions of dollars a year!

The USDA's John Westbrook studies bats that eat moths. During her lifetime, a female moth can lay eggs on a thousand ears of corn - eggs that turn into corn-destroying larvae.

But when bats eat insects, it cuts farmers' pesticide costs by $23 billion nationwide ... and that means food costs less.

"They're a natural, beneficial organism that are protecting our crops from damage by these insect pests," Westbrook said.

And bats can cover a lot of farmland - Westbrook said the range our perhaps 4-50 miles from their colonies.

"The bats do keep grocery costs down," Westbrook said.

Which is why experts are alarmed, because bats are DYING all across the nation ... especially in the Northeast, where many have a disease called white nose syndrome.

And finallly, Bat Fact Four: They make lousy pets.

"They're not like animals that are holdable," said Merlin Tuttle. "We can't pet them, we can't play with them like we can a dog or a cat or that kind of thing."

When you add it up ... saving us billions of dollars, not dangerous, and definitely not dirty, maybe it's our tiny friends of the night that deserve that coveted title ... man's best friend.

For more info:

• Bat Conservation International
• 7th Annual Austin Bat Fest, August 27, 2011