News tagged with bats
Bats: What sounds good doesn't always taste good
Bats use a combination of cues in their hunting sequence - capture, handling and consumption - to decide which prey to attack, catch and consume and which ones they are better off leaving alone or dropping ...
May 21, 2012 |
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Hitting snooze on the molecular clock: Rabies evolves slower in hibernating bats
The rate at which the rabies virus evolves in bats may depend heavily upon the ecological traits of its hosts, according to researchers at the University of Georgia, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ...
May 18, 2012 |
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Early spring means more bat girls
There must be something in the warm breeze. A study on bats by a University of Calgary researcher suggests that bats produce twice as many female babies as male ones in years when spring comes early.
May 05, 2012 |
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Why does rain keep bats grounded?
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a new study published in Biology Letters, researcher Christian Voigt from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany details their findings on Sowell’s short-tailed bats a ...
May 05, 2011 |
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Great Tit Turns Out to be a Killer
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Great Tit is an aggressive songbird found in Britain, continental Europe, parts of Northern Africa, and much of Asia. It is believed to survive mostly on seeds, nuts, fruit, insects, beetles, ...
Sep 10, 2009 |
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Resident bats use pitcher plant as toilet
(PhysOrg.com) -- The pitcher plants are carnivorous species that usually feed on insects and small vertebrates, but one species has been found that prefers to dine on the feces of bats.
Jan 27, 2011 |
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A battle of the vampires, 20 million years ago?
(PhysOrg.com) -- They are tiny, ugly, disease-carrying little blood-suckers that most people have never seen or heard of, but a new discovery in a one-of-a-kind fossil shows that “bat flies” have ...
Feb 02, 2012 |
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Bats rebound in NY caves first hit by white-nose
(AP) -- Researchers found substantially more bats in several caves that were the first ones struck by white-nose syndrome, giving them a glimmer of hope amid a scourge that has killed millions of bats in ...
Apr 19, 2012 |
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Drunk Bats Manage To Pass Sobriety Tests
(PhysOrg.com) -- New World Leaf-nosed bats (Chiroptera Phyllostomidae) are thriving in the tropical forests of Central and South America, even though their diets consist of more fruits and nectars than their ...
Feb 18, 2010 |
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Robo-bats with metal muscles may be next generation of remote control flyers
Tiny flying machines can be used for everything from indoor surveillance to exploring collapsed buildings, but simply making smaller versions of planes and helicopters doesn't work very well. Instead, researchers ...
Jul 07, 2009 |
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Extinct Mammal Used its 'Sweet Spot' to Club Rivals
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists in Uruguay studying extinct mammals called glyptodonts have discovered they used a "sweet spot" in their tails, just like baseball players use the center of percussion (CP), or ...
Aug 27, 2009 |
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New study traces the evolutionary history of what mammals eat
The feeding habits of mammals haven't always been what they are today, particularly for omnivores, finds a new study.
Apr 16, 2012 |
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New research challenges evolutionary theory
(PhysOrg.com) -- New research from the University of Reading overturns conventional views on the nature of evolution, arguing that mammals did not develop into their many different forms in one early and rapid ...
Oct 20, 2011 |
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Bats save energy by drawing in wings on upstroke: study
(Phys.org) -- Bat wings are like hands: meaty, bony and full of joints. A new Brown University study finds that bats take advantage of their flexibility by folding in their wings on the upstroke to save inertial ...
Apr 10, 2012 |
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Rainforest plant developed sonar dish to attract pollinating bats
The researchers discovered that a rainforest vine, pollinated by bats, has evolved dish-shaped leaves with such conspicuous echoes that nectar-feeding bats can find its flowers twice as fast by echolocation. The study is ...
Jul 28, 2011 |
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Bat
See article
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).
For more information about Bat, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
