We humans can explain how our relationships with college roommates and co-workers have formed over the years, but scientists haven't had a good grip on how friendly connections among strangers are made between animals—until ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 19, 2020
0
186
It's no coincidence that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years—SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg and likely the newly arrived 2019-nCoV virus—originated in bats.
Cell & Microbiology
Feb 10, 2020
3
1760
On moonless nights in a tropical forest, bats slice through the inky darkness, snatching up insects resting silently on leaves—a seemingly impossible feat. New experiments at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 01, 2019
0
843
Some 18 million years ago, an ancestor of mouse-eared bats "stole" genetic material from an ancient virus related to Ebola.
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 24, 2018
0
188
(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers, one with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the other the University of Maryland, has found evidence that suggests vampire bats regurgitate blood into the mouths of others ...
In the 65-million-year-old arms race between bats and moths, some moth species rub their genitals to jam the calls of bats. Radar jamming is commonly used in human warfare, allowing pilots to render themselves invisible. ...
Plants & Animals
May 05, 2015
11
1226
(Phys.org)—A team of researches with members from several institutions in the U.S. has found that the long tails sported by the luna moth exist as a means to foil attacks by bats. In their paper published in Proceedings ...
Migrating birds 'share the pain' of the arduous task of leading a v-formation, so that they can then take turns saving energy by following in another bird's wake, a new study shows.
Evolution
Feb 02, 2015
1
1206
Pilots are trained to guard against vertigo: a sudden loss of the sense of vertical direction that renders them unable to tell "up" from "down" and sometimes even leads to crashes. Coming up out of a subway station can produce ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 03, 2014
0
0
(Phys.org) —Large roads and highways have been shown to reduce the numbers of many species that live near them. Previously, this effect has been mostly studied in birds. But a recent research paper, published in the science ...
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).
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
