Moths - Warp Stalkers - Crocolisks - Monkeys - Wolves - Core Hounds - Wasps - Dragonhawks - Turtles - Boars - Carrion Birds - Bears - Serpents - Tallstriders - Worms - Dogs - Ravagers - Shale Spiders - Sporebats - Spirit Beasts - Birds of Prey - Scorpids - Chimaeras
Random pet family appreciation thread is where I roll a random pet family every week for everyone to share their pictures, their stories, their love for that pet family. Please no hate or rants. This is an appreciation thread. If you dislike the family, don't post! Hopefully with some love we can get some hunters to try out new pets they never would have thought to tame before.
Our 24th family is the shrieking bat family!

Image from WoW TCG.
Bat facts
~Bats have been tameable since Vanilla WoW.
~Bats have four skin colors.
~Bats have three rare members, but only two are tameable. These are Blind Hunter and Ressan the Needler. Shadikith the Glider is still untameable at this time.
~Back in Wrath, bats were tamed by 0.3% of level 80 hunters. Placing them near the bottom at number 20 on the list, tied with moths. (Source)
~Back in Wrath, batskinbrown was the most tamed skin at 36.6%. Batskin (grey) was the least tamed skin at 11.0%. (Source)
~Bats had the ability Screech, which did damage to the target and had an aoe melee attack lowering effect. This was great for aoe farming before thunderstomp was basic for all tenacity pets. Bats shared this ability with carrion birds and owls (now renamed to birds of prey).
~Two minipet bats are Tirisfal Batling (using batskinbrown) and Vampiric Batling (using batskinviolet). Vampiric Batling is no longer available in game. It dropped from Prince Tenris Mirkblood, a special boss in Karazhan only available during the Scourge Invasion, the Wrath of the Lich King opening event which ran from October 22nd to November 4th 2008. Those players that got this minipet have the Feat of Strength Vampire Hunter.
~Players can turn others into bats if they have any Hallowed Wand - Bat left over from Hallow's End.
~Before Cataclysm all bat skins had green eyes. While batskin (grey) eye color did not change, the other three skins did.
~Duskbats squeak when clicked on, even after taming.
~Blood Seeker is a "semi-rare" spawn, meaning he spawns rarely but does not have a silver dragon around its portrait. Formerly a miniboss in Shadowfang Keep, he now resides in Deepholm and shares spawn points and timer with Aeonaxx, exactly to how Vyragosa shares spawn points and timer with the more rarer Time-Lost Proto Drake. Blood Seeker spawns high off the ground and only stays up a few seconds before disappearing, which makes taming him almost impossible. He was tameable before Cataclysm, so a hunter could still have him tamed. However it was unknown that he was going to move to Deepholm and become one of the biggest trolls for rare mount campers, so no one was able to tame him beforehand knowing they could use him to grief players.
~Bloodseeker Bats in Zul'Gurub had 1.0 attack speed in Vanilla. This was the fastest attack speed a tamed pet could have which was great for caster push-back in PvP and for procing the old Spirit Bond (gained health every time the pet hit). Broken Tooth was the only other pet that shared this attack speed. Bloodseeker Bat was preferred in PvP by some players over Broken Tooth due to its annoyingly large wingspan to block targeting.