With a descending chromatic bass line similar to Pink Floyd’s 1973 hit “Money,” explosive choruses and simple, disconnected lyrics, “Ants and Bats” is a powerful b-side for the band’s debut single “Hey There.”
The song was first mentioned on October 22nd, 2010 with a link to the song on their Facebook page. A CD single for “Hey There” was released in 2010 with a fold-out sleeve depicting King Gizzard and a Lizard Wizard. Outside of this, the band refused to release the song officially though they had registered it in the ASCAP ACE Repertory. In a 2015 Reddit AMA, Stu explained that the CDs were made for friends and that he was unsure what happened to them. He also said that, at the time, he had no intentions on re-releasing the singles. For years the single was circulated unofficially. On December 14th, 2020, the band tweeted that they were looking for high quality FLACs of the first two singles. This would be for Teenage Gizzard, released on Christmas Day. The second song on the album would be “Ants and Bats.”
“Ants and Bats” earliest known performance was on 2010-10-29 at the Kaleide Theatre at RMIT University. This was only seven days after the song was initially released. The final confirmed performance was on 2011-02-12 at the Geelong Gaol in Geelong. Live versions of the song contain a longer intro.