Endless Forms Most Beautiful - Bats
Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a weekly, Sunday post inviting everyone to learn more about the incredible biodiversity on planet earth. This week’s edition introduces bats.
Fruit Bat Photo source
by Miss Baker
This post is dedicated to my AP biology students, Jacob and Stevie, who think bats are as cool as birds because they also fly. Well, I’m not convinced they’re as cool as birds, but I do think they are endless forms most beautiful. I actually know very little about bats so I had to do a bit of research. Here is the classification scheme for bats:
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Chordata
Class Mammalia
Infraclass Eutheria
Superorder Laurasiatheria
Order Chiroptera
Basic bat anatomy can be viewed here. Bats are divided into two groups: echolocators and fruit bats. There are four other extinct groups. Most echolocators are insect eaters and are helpful to agriculture because they eat insect pests. In one hour, a single bat can eat up to 1,000 insects. Fruit bats also benefit agriculture because they aid in seed dispersal. When they ingest fruit, the seed is not digested and is eliminated in the bat’s feces. By this time, the bat has flown away from the original parent plant and thus, the seed is dispersed far away from the parent.
Fruit bat holding an orange Photo source
Unfortunately, bats have been given a bad reputation, mainly due to the few species that drink blood. These bats don’t drink enough blood to kill their hosts, but the bites may cause infection. There is also a common misconception that bats are a dangerous source of rabies. While it’s true that bats can carry rabies, less than one-half of one percent of bats have it. Another reason bats are disliked is that some species aren’t considered very attractive.
Golden Bat (Mimon bennettii) Photo source
However, on this website you can see what I think is the world’s cutest bat.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that bats are better fliers than birds. You can watch them flying in wind tunnels on this website. There is one species of bat that can catch birds in the air and prey on them! However, there are some birds that can catch and prey on bats as well, as you can see in this video.
How do bats hang upside down? The talons on a bat’s feet are closed when the feet are relaxed and opened when the feet are flexed. Think of a bull clip. In order to open the bull clip you must apply a force, but it takes no energy to close it. When a bat lands it flexes its feet, grasps the ledge, and then relaxes.
Bull clip Photo source
Fruit Bats Photo source
Because the bat’s feet are relaxed while hanging upside down, if a bat dies while hanging, it will continue to hang until something knocks it down!
Why hang upside down? Bats can’t take off from the ground. They must climb up to a high spot and then fall from that spot to begin flight. Roosting from a high spot allows bats to easily launch into flight when desired.
A mysterious illness has been killing thousands of bats in New York and Vermont. In some caves, the death rate has been as high as 90%, leaving many to fear the bat populations may not recover from what is affecting them. It’s nicknamed “white-nose disease” after the fuzzy white fungus that grows on the nose of most affected bats. But, the fungus is just a secondary infection that only attacks the bats once they are already sick from the unknown primary cause.
Little Brown Bats Photo source
The disease is currently affecting four species including the highly endangered Indiana bat. Like the disappearing bees, a decrease in bat numbers will have a severe impact on agriculture. The faster this mystery is solved, the better.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I personally think bats are very interesting animals. I did not realize how geographically distributed they were though. One of the websites that was in your post had a picture that showed the geographic distribution of bats: http://tolweb.org/tree/ToLimages/chiroptera.dist.gif (The areas were bats the bats are, are in red) The Mindoro stripe-faced fruit bat almost looks like it has the face of a dog but the body of a bat since it has more of a defined nose and jaw. You said that bats could only fly if they took off from a high area. I was wondering why that is so I tried to look it up. This video shows how a bat looks as it is flying: http://www.livescience.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=Bat_wind
However, I could not find exactly why bats must take off from a high spot in order to fly. Why is that?
February 18th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I did a little research about bats. Here is what I found.
Bats can be found in almost every part of the world except where it is very, very hot or in the really cold areas and on some remote islands. They live on all continents except Antarctica. You can find more species of bats (different kinds) where the weather is nice and warm. Those warm spots are near the equator and are called the “tropics” and “rain forests.”
A single little brown bat can catch 600 Mosquitoes in just one hour. There are a lot of different kinds of bats — from the tiny bumblebee bat (which is the size of a jellybean and weighs less than a penny) to the huge Bismarck flying fox (with a wingspan as long as an average man).
In fact, there are over 900 different species of bats. Bats are mammals.
Here are the websites I got the information from:
http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/bats/facts9.htm
http://members.aol.com/bats4kids/
February 18th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
To be honest, I have never really cared for bats. However, I think that they are a necessity to agriculture, as are bees. As Miss Baker said, bats suppress agricultural insect pests, saving farmers millions of dollars in avoided pesticide costs and better crop yields, as shown in a study done in Texas. http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/?req=20070625c
It is amazing how the bats hang upside down. I have always wondered to how they do this, considering gravity. They must have received these adaptations due to their surroundings, like we have been talking about in class.
Bats are amazing creatures and defiantly endless forms most beautiful. This post has really showed me how awesome bats really are, like the disappearing bees post. I found a slide show showing a variety of beautiful bats. It really shows how cool bats are. http://youtube.com/watch?v=GUi3YFZwBiY
February 18th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Bats are very interesting creatures. Not only are they extremely beneficial to the environment, but they have unbelievable techniques for catching prey. The article at this site: http://nelson.beckman.uiuc.edu/courses/neuroethol/models/bat_echolocation/bat_echolocation.html talks about how echolocation works. Put simply, bats emit sound, which echoes off objects around them. They have sensors that detect the echoed sound, and can determine the location, size and movement of an object, generally prey.
The “white-nose disease” is spreading quickly among bats and is very threatening to their population. The article at this site: http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jan30/0,4670,BatDieOff,00.html says that in one cave, the disease has caused a population of over 15,000 bats to decline to only 1,500 bats over a two-year period. During hibernation, bats are in very close proximity and for this reason, the “white-nose disease” spreads quickly. I was wondering why only some of the bats died in the cave if they were all so close together. While there was a rapid decline in number, it doesn’t make sense for so many to survive. In class, we have been talking about evolution and natural selection. We learned that selective pressures, such as disease, allow only some individuals of a population to survive. Some individuals survived because of a trait that may have enabled them to better survive their environment. So, the 1,500 bats that survived may have had a favorable trait which they will pass on to their offspring.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I absolutly adore Bats, I have for a really long time. My sister was in a Girl Scout troop a couple years ago, and the Chatahochee Nature Center held a special day for Girl/Boy Scouts, and they had a “Bat Day” there were tones of colorable pictures, lectures (all revolving around bats), bat cookies, my mom and sister and I built a bat house, we got to hear stories about bats, and the best thing ever, was getting to PET A BAT!!! I really like that. The bat was only 2 inches long, and she was really cute.
I would hate for any species of bat to die off just from some fungus (and unknown cause). I actually am hoping to help out at the chatahoochee nature center sometime this summer with their programs (of any kind). I found out that there are over 900 species of extant (still surviving) bats.
Some interesting facts about bats are:
1. Their nickname is “The Flying Fox”
2. Bats can fly solo or choose to travel in groups
3. Only three speceis of bats feed on blood
4. The smallest bat is only 2 grams with a wingspan of 12-13cm
5. The largest bat is 1.5kg with a wingspan of 2m
February 26th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Bats are such interesting animals and are very important,( even though they are seen as blood sucking animals by most people). I even have seen a bat before, when i heard someone say that they saw one i was expecting to see something very different. But what they had found was a very small bat that was only about 1-2 inches tall. Anyways, i was researching and i found some very surprising facts about bats. For one i found out that most bats have quite good vision and that they see in color. And their echolocation just makes it so they are able to efficiantly hunt in total darkness. Bats also play a very big role to the environment, it is estimated that around 95 percent of all rain forest growth is the result of bats spreading seeds. Here is the site where i found my research it has lots of information on nearly everything about bats http://www.batworld.org/main/main.html. Cool post i learned a lot of cool stuff about bats and i have definatly learned to appreciate them more.
March 9th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Bats why bats. When I was younger I was deathly afraid of vampires. The ability to transform into such a scary looking creature and a creature that drank blood, ahhh! Anyway thanks to this article I know that there are very few species of bats that really drink blood. The most interesting thing I learned from this post was about why bats hang upside down. The efficiency that the bats have in being ready in a moments notice to fly is incredible. I also was incredibly surprised about the fact that over all bats are more efficient flyers than birds are. The website showing the bat in the wind tunnel baffles me. The bat looked so clumsy, it is amazing that it uses less energy than birds.
Due to this post I looked up information on the vampire bat just to check it out.
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/vampire.html
Oh thanks for dedicating this post to me miss baker I appreciate it
Oh and thanks to this post I definitely think bats are better than birds thanks for clearing that up for me = )
March 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I also adore bats. I think they are the most adorable flying creatures. I love how they look like foxes. I read about the two bats billy mentioned and I wanted to see what they looked like, so here are some links to pictures.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.americanbat.com/sitebuilder/images/Bumble_bee_bat-198×169.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.americanbat.com/batfacts.html&h=169&w=198&sz=6&hl=en&start=4&tbnid=fXlDoK6YrHk9OM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbumblebee%2Bbats%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
that one shows the bumblebee bat along with a few others. the bumblebee one is near the bottom resting in a person’s hand. that one has to be my favorite.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/radars_ecology/image/Bats/grey_headed_flying_fox_skimming_water_75pct.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geocities.com/radars_ecology/Bat_Ecology_Micro_Vesper2.html&h=352&w=675&sz=42&hl=en&start=5&tbnid=Wp4o-0C_BpA1SM:&tbnh=72&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbismark%2Bflying%2Bfox%2Bbat%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
that one is a little blurry, but it does give you an idea of the HUGE wingspan of the bismark flying fox.
I also looked at the striped-face bat Miss Baker had found. At first, I didn’t think it was a bat, I thought it was some sort of fox or meerkat or something. It looked a little different since it has a more pronounced jaw than a lot of others i have seen. How could a larger jaw like that be practical for flight? I know that birds can’t have a jaw like that because it is too heavy, so why is it not too heavy for a bat to fly with? Their wings seem even more flimsy than those of a bird?