Do bats recognize people?

Bats can recognize people to some extent, especially bats that have frequent contact with humans such as rehabilitated bats, research bats, and pet fruit bats in some countries, though their recognition abilities are different from dogs or cats. Studies on bats, particularly highly social species like Egyptian fruit bats and Mexican free-tailed bats, have shown they can recognize individual roost mates and researchers using vocalizations, scent, and visual cues. Bats that are handled regularly by caretakers can learn to distinguish between familiar people who feed them and unfamiliar people, showing less fear and more approach behavior toward familiar caretakers and more avoidance toward strangers. Some research indicates bats can recognize human voices and associate specific people with positive experiences like feeding and negative experiences like handling for medical treatment. However, wild bats that only encounter humans briefly at night while hunting insects do not form individual recognition of people and generally see humans as potential predators to avoid. They use echolocation and vision to detect large objects including humans and will steer clear. So while bats have good memory and can learn to recognize familiar humans in captivity or rehabilitation settings, wild bats around your house at night do not recognize you as an individual but rather as a large moving object to avoid.