Actual bats in the belfry: Facilities team establishes vampire bat research room

Oct. 30, 2024

A set of stairs on campus dead ends into a nondescript white door. Beyond the door, situated in one of the building’s towers, is a new research lab that is home to a colony of vampire bats. The story of how the bats came to occupy the belfry isn’t spooky but did involve a bit of collaborative magic. In two short months, staff from Princeton Facilities and Laboratory Animal Resources (LAR) transformed an unused space into a bat cave.