Can bats remember people?

Bats have good memory and can remember individuals of their own species, but whether they can remember specific human people is less clear and depends on the species and level of interaction. Research on bats shows they have excellent spatial memory and can remember where roosts, feeding sites, and water sources are located for years, and they have complex social memory, recognizing and remembering individual colony mates through vocalizations and scent, and maintaining long-term social bonds. Some studies on bats that interact closely with humans, such as bats in captivity or research settings, suggest they can learn to recognize individual humans who feed them versus those who handle them in stressful ways, using visual, auditory, and olfactory cues, and they may show less fear or more approach behavior toward familiar caretakers. However, bats are generally wild animals that avoid humans and do not form the same type of bonds with people as dogs or pet rats do. Their primary memory is adapted for navigation, foraging, and social colony life, including remembering migratory routes and hibernation sites. While a bat that has repeated positive interactions with a specific person may learn to associate that person with food or safety and show reduced fear, this is more learned association than personal recognition in the human sense. So bats can remember and distinguish between humans to some extent, especially in captive settings, but their strongest memories are for roosts, food, and other bats.