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How bats survive Norwegian winter nights

You have probably seen bats flying at dusk. They suddenly appear on summer evenings, when other flying creatures have settled down for the night. However, they are not a common sight in Norway, because there aren't that many ...

Bat 'nightclubs' may be the key to solving the next pandemic

Bats carry some of the deadliest zoonotic diseases that can infect both humans and animals, such as Ebola and COVID-19. In a recently-published article in the journal Cell Genomics, a Texas A&M research team has revealed ...

Poland's 'Bat-mum' saving bats from climate change

A Polish pensioner has been dubbed "Bat-mum" for taking care of ailing bats from her ninth-floor flat as the nocturnal mammals increasingly struggle with the effects of climate change.

New research shows how bats 'leapfrog' their way home at night

A silent ballet takes place above our heads at night as Britain's bat populations leave their roosts to forage for food. Although their initial movement away from roosts is fairly well understood, until recently little was ...

Unraveling the complexity of betacoronaviruses in bats

With pandemics increasingly a global concern, an international study led by scientists at Université de Montréal offers new insights into the intricate evolutionary dynamics of betacoronaviruses in bats, providing a deeper ...

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Bat

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Bats are mammals in the order Chiroptera (pronounced /kaɪˈrɒptərə/). The forelimbs of bats are developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of flight (opposed to other mammals, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, that glide only for a distance). Bats do not flap arms like birds, instead they flap spread out hands where their fingers are very long and covered with a thin membrane or patagium. Chiroptera comes from two Greek words cheir (χειρ) "hand" and pteron (πτερον) "wing."

There is an estimated total of about 1,100 species worldwide, which is about 20 percent of all classified mammal species. About 70 percent of bats are insectivores. Most of the rest are frugivores, with a few species being carnivorous. Bats are present throughout most of the world and perform a vital ecological role by pollinating flowers, and eat various plants to dispere their seeds. Many tropical plants depend for their seeds to be distributed entirely by bats.

Bats range in size from Kitti's Hog-nosed Bat measuring 29–33 mm (1.14–1.30 in) in length and 2 g (0.07 oz) in mass, to the Giant golden-crowned flying fox which has a wing span of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) and weighs approximately 1.2 kg (3 lb).

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA