21 Free Spooky Vintage Bat Drawings For Halloween

A chillingly beautiful collection of 21 vintage bat illustrations, from scientific engravings to artistic silhouettes. Perfect for Halloween crafts, natural history art boards, or gothic décor inspiration.

Along with witches, wizards, skeletons, ghosts, spiders and human skulls, bats are also associated with a spooky Halloween. Here, I’ve curated an exciting collection of vintage bat drawings that can be used for your Halloween crafts and DIYs.

There are many theories about why bats are associated with Halloween. One theory is that on All Hallows Eve (Halloween), the Celts used to light bonfires that attracted flying insects, which bats would then feed on.

Another theory involves Vampire bats and their association with evil. Or it could just be that bats are nocturnal animals, so they fly around in the night sky on Halloween.

Some Fun Facts About Bats

• Bats are the only true flying mammals.
• They live for up to 25 years.
• They are not blind, but they do use echolocation to navigate in the dark and hunt.
• Even though there are over 1000 different species of bats, only 3 are Vampire bats.
• Non-Vampire bats live off insects, fruit, nectar and pollen.
• Insect-eating bats are significant pest controllers.
• Fruit and nectar-eating bats are important seed dispersers and pollinators.
• The largest bat with a wingspan over six feet is the Flying fox.
  

The Vintage Bat Drawings 1-10

To download the vintage bat drawing or bat art you want, click on the title above the image. A higher-resolution image should automatically download to your desktop computer.

1. Ernst Haeckel Bat Drawings

This incredible collection of detailed bat drawings is by the famed naturalist artist Ernst Haeckel. The illustration was featured in the German book Kunstformen der Natur (1904).

The common names of the bat drawings on this print are as follows:

1-2: Brown Long-eared Bat
3: Lesser Long-eared Bat
4: Lesser False Vampire Bat
5: Big-eared Woolly Bat
6-7: Tomes’s Sword-nosed Bat
8: Mexican Funnel-eared Bat
9: Antillean Ghost-faced Bat
10: Flower-faced Bat
11: Greater Spear-nosed Bat
12: Thumbless Bat
13: Greater Horseshoe Bat
14: Wrinkle-faced Bat
15: Spectral Bat

2. Bat Drawings 1839

This fantastic Bat poster is from the Edinburgh Journal of Natural History and of the Physical Sciences, 1939.

This chart includes several species of bats. The two bats in flight are Geoffroy’s bat and the European Free-Tailed bat. Both species are found mainly in Mediterranean Countries.

3. Edinburgh Journal Bats 2

4. Egyptian Bats 1813

This collection of bat drawings is from a documented French army expedition to Egypt. ( “Description de l’Égypte, ou, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française.”) 1813.

5. Trident Bat Drawing

The Trident Bat is found in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. This bat drawing is from an 1826 Egyptian natural history book.

6. Egyptian Fruit Bat Illustration

I don’t know much about this bat print, except that it is from the Iconographia Zoologica Special Collections at the University of Amsterdam. I chose this bat image as it showed the bat hanging from a branch rather than in flight.

7. Bat Skeleton

I don’t know much about this bat skeleton drawing except that it was by the French Naturalist Émile Deyrolle. This bat skeleton would make a fabulous Halloween decoration.

8. Chilean Bat – Myotis chiloensis

This excellent bat drawing is from a collection of one of Darwin’s essential and famous scientific voyages on the Beagle.

The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Under the Command of Captain Fitzroy, R.N., from 1832 to 1836, is a 5-part book published between February 1838 and October 1843. It was written by various authors and edited and supervised by Charles Darwin, who published expert descriptions of the collections he had made during the Beagle voyage.

9. Pipistrellus Bat Drawings

The Pipistrellus bat is small. This bat illustration is another from the Iconographia Zoologica collection in the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam.

I love the castle drawing in the background of this bat illustration; it gives it that extra spooky Halloween vibe.

10. Red Bat Drawings

These North American red and brown bats in flight and on the perch were from 1874.

Bat Illustrations 11-21

11. Vintage Japanese Bats Painting

Painting of bats flying in the moonlight by the Japanese artist Ohara Koson.

This painting was featured in this fantastic collection of free vintage Halloween art.

12. Bat In Moonlight

Japanese woodcut painting of a bat in the moonlight by Takahashi Bihō.

13. Tonga Bat

The heads, skulls, and teeth of different specimens of the bat family surround a tonga bat. From the Wellcome Collection.

14. Flying Short-Eared Bat Etching

Print 15: Eight Different Species of Bats’

Eight different specimens of bats are shown, spread and folded.

Print 16: Oliver Goldsmith Bats 1

Collection of various bats from A History of the Earth and Animated Nature (1820) by Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774).

Print 17: Oliver Goldsmith Bats 2

Print 18: Kirby Bats

From the “Natural history of the animal kingdom for the use of young people”, by W. F. Kirby, 1889.

Print 19: Greater Horse Shoe Bat

From Iconographia Zoologica at the University of Amsterdam.

Print 20: Bat and Skeleton

By Johann Daniel Meyer, 1748. This bat illustration would fit in nicely with the collection of Spooky Halloween images on the site.

Print 21: Six Nocturnal Bats

Line engraving by Milton after S. Edwards.

Other Collections

If you enjoyed these vintage bat drawings, then you will probably love these natural history prints on Picture Box Blue.

• Vintage Animal Prints
• Vintage Rabbit Pictures
• Antique Octopus Illustrations
• Collection of Toucan Paintings

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