Tadarida Bat... origin of the Tadar brand

Tadar is called after the Tadarian Brasiliensis Mexican Free Tailed Bat who occupy a wide variety of habitats, ranging from desert communities through pinion-juniper woodland and pine-oak forests at elevations from sea level to 9,000 feet or more.

Bats, only mammal that can fly, have modified hands and arms that serve as wings capable of sustained flight. They have been flitting across the night skies since the Eocene Epoch, some 50 million years ago. In all this time, the physical features of these animals have changed very little. Fossil specimens from Europe and North America are nearly indistinguishable from living forms.

In the same way that Tadar uses mm-waves to detect and identify threat objects hidden under clothing or to see through cloud and fog, the Tadarida bat uses high frequency signals to navigate, locate and catch insect prey in the dark. The high frequency energy pulses emitted by the bat, bounce off objects in its path and the reflected signals are interpreted by different types of sensory cells in the bat’s brain to determine both the location and physical properties of these objects. A complex ‘circulator’ feature in this ‘echo-location’ process allows the bat to dampen its own emitted signal so it can detect the ‘quieter’ signals reflected off its prey.

About the Tadarida Bat
The largest U.S. populations of Tadarida free-tailed bats live in the West, with the densest concentrations found in Texas where they form maternity colonies numbering in the millions. They are found throughout Mexico and most of the western and southern U.S. The largest maternity colonies are formed in limestone caves, abandoned mines, under bridges, and in buildings, but smaller colonies also have been found in hollow trees. It is estimated that 100-million Mexican free-tailed bats come to Central Texas each year to raise their young. Nursing females require large quantities of insects that are high in fat, which they obtain by consuming egg-laden moths. The 100 million free-tailed bats living in Central Texas caves consume approximately 1,000 tons of insects nightly, a large proportion of which are agricultural pests. Researchers using Doppler weather radar watch emerging bats ascend to altitudes of 1,000-10,000 feet to feed on migrating cotton boll worm moths, army cut-worm moths, and other costly agricultural pests that migrate north from Mexico.

The Tadarida bat is estimated to save American farmers over $1 billion annually in damage to agricultural crops that would normally be caused by the cotton ball-worm moth (a.k.a. corn ear-worm moth). This makes the Tadarida bat one of the most effective naturally-occurring border surveillance systems available