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El murciélago fue visto alrededor de la cueva.

El murciélago fue visto alrededor de la cueva.
The bat was seen around the cave.
From Lesson 275:Trajectory prepositions (a través de, alrededor de)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about El murciélago fue visto alrededor de la cueva.

How does alrededor de work here, and does it always need the de?
Alrededor de translates to "around" or "surrounding." When you are saying "around [something]," you must include de. Here, it connects the spatial phrase to la cueva. If you just want to say "look around" without specifying a place, you drop the de and just use alrededor.
Why is it fue visto instead of just vio?
Fue visto is the passive voice, meaning "was seen." It is formed using the past tense of ser (fue) plus the past participle of ver (visto). If you used vio, it would mean the bat itself saw something, rather than being the animal that was seen by someone else.
If there were multiple bats, would visto change?
Yes! In the passive voice, the past participle acts like an adjective and must match the subject in gender and number. If the subject were los murciélagos, the phrase would change to fueron vistos. Since el murciélago is singular and masculine, we use fue visto.
I noticed murciélago has a written accent mark. Why is that?
The spoken stress in murciélago falls on the third-to-last syllable (cié). Words stressed on the third-to-last syllable always get a written accent mark in Spanish. Fun fact: murciélago is a famous example in Spanish of a word that contains all five vowels!

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