What is the current canonicity of Bat Ponies?

[flutterbard 55]

What is the current canon on bat ponies? If they are canon as a race, where do they live?

[Denim&Venöm 16,830]

Well they have appeared in the show once, were slated to appear again before getting cut due to time constraints, and appeared to be cannon to the novels. They were given the name Thestrals by Lauren Faust in the S2 script. 

So while they do exist in universe, there isn't much to go off of. Many thought it was gonna be Hollow Shades, but that was just the home for the pony of shadows. 

[Steve Piranha 29,217]

An unfortunate case of an interesting concept, but largely unexplored. They are indeed canon, but there doesn't seem any interest in expanding the lore of 'em bats . I hope we get some of that in the upcoming episode 200

[EpicEnergy 22,530]

I think they are canon, since they've appeared in a few episodes before.

[Props Valroa 26,242]

I think they are just a mutation. Although the aspect of a whole bat pony race worshiping Nightmare Moon and wanting to bring her back is interesting.

[Landi 598]

Unfortunately we know very little about the actual canonicity of the bat ponies. All we really know is that some are Luna's guards. Although even that hasn't been explored much. Everything else about batponies is pretty much just left up to head-canons. It's really too bad. Batponies had a ton of potential, but the show never really gave us anything about them. They are still my second favorite creature in the show though.

[The Nth Doctor 655]

They've only ever been animated armor rather than an actual breed of pony, which is disappointing, and I do wish the comics had done anything with them like they did for everything else the show forgot about.

[TheSupremeLeaderOfChaos 1,190]

I think everyone's already covered a lot of the technical stuff about the canonicity of the bat ponies, so I just want to pop in to say, I still *cannot believe* Fluttershy is canonically at least part bat pony after that apple-eating bat episode, and they just left us with that cliffhanger and it never came up again lmao