Bats!! You may be scared if you saw a colony or cloud of bats pass overhead. You may think of blood-thirsty vampires or even rabies! What you probably don’t realise is that we humans are reliant on them for survival, just as much as we are dependent on honeybees.

Can you imagine a world without bats? Well, you most likely can. Living in New Zealand, we rarely see them flying about at night. 
Bats are New Zealand's only native land mammals. There are three species: the long-tailed bat, the lesser short-tailed bat and the greater short-tailed bat. The latter is thought to be extinct, with no sightings since 1965. The most likely cause of their demise is not only because of European settlement restricting their habitat to small islands near Stewart Island, but also ship rats being accidentally introduced in 1963 to those few islands on which they had found refuge. 

​Although bat sightings are uncommon in New Zealand, bats make up almost one quarter of all mammals on the planet and are essential to human survival. Just as important to humanity as the honeybees, they are pollinators for forests, fruits (such as mangoes, guava and papaya) and agave, the spiky desert plant from which tequila is made. They also help farmers by eating insects that would otherwise be managed by pesticides, which are harmful to the atmosphere and our health. 

All of the reasons that bats are under threat can be linked to one common factor:
​HUMANS!

There are close to 100 species of bats listed as endangered and vulnerable worldwide. This is due to many things, such as habitat loss, windfarms and introduced diseases. White nose syndrome is thought to have been accidentally introduced to a cave that tourists regularly visit and has then spread through bat colonies across America. This disease alone has killed close to 600 million bats. 

All of the reasons that bats are under threat can be linked to one common factor: humans! 
The Earth has existed for more than four billion years and has sustained life for three billion of them. The modern form of human beings has existed for just 200,000 years, yet our impact on the planet is so great that scientists around the world are calling for our period in the Earth’s history to be named ‘the Anthropocene‘ – the age of humans. The changes we are now making have exacted a heavy toll on the natural world around us, and now threaten the planet’s ability to provide for us all. 

We must consider our impact on biodiversity. The existence of life is a fine balance that relies on wild species, like the bats, to thrive for many other species, including us humans, to survive. 
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This installation is made up of four looming, apocalyptic bats and one hundred numbered bat urns. Some are styled after bat species and some are imaginary and playful, but also to represent those yet undiscovered. The colony is a grave image of endangerment and a chance for people to reflect on the impact we have on our environment and to consider those which we may fear, or allow to slip from our thoughts, as being vital to our continued existence.