When You Go to the Loo, a Bat Might Go Boo

Among roosting bats in parts of Africa, the inside of a drop toilet can be a lovely place to hang.

Imagine you are at a research camp in the Tanzanian grasslands and you need to relieve yourself. You walk to the nearby pit toilet: a concrete slab with a tiny portal that opens into an eight-foot pit heaped with human waste. You drop your pants, squat and carry out your business. Suddenly you realize you are not alone. Maybe it is a slight gust of air, or something even more corporeal.

“I’ve had the soft, leathery caress of a bat’s wing against my buttocks while having a poo,” said Leejiah Dorward, a postdoctoral researcher at Bangor University in Wales.

In Tanzania, the spaces under certain pit latrines have become cozy havens for roosting bats, according to a paper published by Dr. Dorward and colleagues in September in the African Journal of Ecology. The researchers found the pits’ rotting depths warm the air, and the concrete slab overhead keeps predators out. Even the occasional falling feces or overhead spray does not drive the bats away, though they may startle the animals into flight.