Every night at dusk, billowing, living clouds of Mexican free-tailed bats spiral out of caves in numbers so vast they are mistaken for plumes of smoke from immense fires. These fast-flying, bug-eating bats are renowned for their spectacular emergences from densely populated colonies such as Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Bracken Cave in Texas, the world’s largest known bat colony. But understanding the behavior and importance of these bats, both in the sky and in their roosts, involves untangling a complex web of social, ecological, and evolutionary history. What do we know about these bats? And how do we study a species that is at once common and mysterious?

In Bats at Home and Aloft, Gary McCracken—a leading expert on Mexican free-tailed bats—recounts the adventures, joys, and challenges of field research, describing his efforts across four decades to unravel the wonders and mysteries of bat behavior. McCracken shows how bats shed light on a wide array of topics in evolutionary biology, ecology, behavior, and conservation, as well as why bats are a case study for seemingly intractable issues in environmental politics. Vivid and engaging, this book takes readers into the field to see how research is practiced and how science progresses as one idea replaces another.