Latest Bats Stories
In first-time experiments in the wild, a researcher at Brown University has discovered that a species of bat in Madagascar, Myzopoda aurita, uses wet adhesion to attach itself to surfaces. The finding explains why the bat "” unlike almost all others "” roosts head-up. It also helps to explain how it differs from a similar head-up roosting species. Results appear in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.There are approximately 1,200 species of bats worldwide. Of that total, only...
Researchers reconstruct the evolution of bat migration with the aid of a mathematical modelNot just birds, but also a few species of bats face a long journey every year. Researchers at Princeton University in the U.S. and at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany studied the migratory behavior of the largest extant family of bats, the so-called "Vespertilionidae" with the help of mathematical models. They discovered that the migration over short as well as...
Spanish researchers have confirmed that the largest bat in Europe, Nyctalus lasiopterus, was present in north-eastern Spain during the Late Pleistocene (between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago). The Greater Noctule fossils found in the excavation site at AbrÃc Romanà (Barcelona) prove that this bat had a greater geographical presence more than 10,000 years ago than it does today, having declined due to the reduction in vegetation cover.Although this research study, published in the journal...
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To avoid becoming a bat's tasty treat, a species of tiger moth plays a trick with sound. The moth can make up to 450 ultrasonic clicks in a tenth of a second to jam the hungry bat's sonar and escape death. The discovery was made by Aaron Corcoran, a Wake Forest University graduate student, and William Conner, professor of biology at Wake Forest. "This is the first example of prey that jams biological sonar," Conner says. Their research...
A bizarre New Zealand bat that is as much at home walking four-legged on the ground as winging through the air had an Australian ancestor 20 million years ago with the same rare ability, a new study has found.The discovery overturns a long-held held view that the agile walking and climbing skills of the lesser short-tailed bat - Mystacina tuberculata "“ evolved in the absence of any ground-dwelling mammal competitors or predators, says an international team of researchers led by Dr Suzanne...
A research paper co-written by a Virginia Tech faculty member explains a 60-year mystery behind a rare bat's nose that is unusually large for its species. The findings soon will be published in the scientific trade journal, Physical Review Letters.The article, "Acoustic effects accurately predict an extreme case of biological morphology," by Z. Zhang, R. Müller, and S.N. Truong, details the adult Bourret's horseshoe bat (known scientifically as the "Rhinolophus...
Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history"”significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice."Ultimately we are trying to discover what...
Slow-flying, woodland bats "” which tend to be at greater risk from extinction than their speedier kin "” really don't like the light, according to a study published online on June 18th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Lesser horseshoe bats will stray from their usual flight routes to steer clear of the artificial glow from lights that are similar to everyday street lights, the new report shows.The echolocation bats depend on to navigate their way in the dark doesn't help...
German scientists have discovered bats can use echolocation in identifying characteristics of other individual bats' voices to recognize each other. Researchers from the University of Tuebingen and the University of Applied Sciences in Konstanz said they first tested the ability of four greater mouse-eared bats to distinguish between the echolocation calls of other bats. After observing the bats learned to discriminate the voices of other bats, then they programmed a computer model that...
Experts warned Congress on Thursday that a mysterious fungus attacking America's bats represents the most serious threat to wildlife in a century and could spread nationwide within years.The condition, known as white-nose syndrome, gets its name from the white fungus speckled amongst the bats, reports the Associated Press.Experts told two House subcommittees on Thursday about discovering caves where bats had been decimated by the disease."One cave there was turned into a morgue, with bats...
Latest Bats Reference Libraries
Image Caption: A stuffed Epomophorus labiatus at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Credit: David Starner/Wikipedia (CC BY 3.0) The Ethiopian epauletted fruit bat (Epomophorus labiatus) is a megabat that can be found in Kenya, Ethiopia, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Sudan, Rwanda, and Uganda, among many other areas. It prefers a habitat within arid and moist savannahs, at elevations of up to 6,561 feet above sea level. It can also be found in woodland or bushland areas....
The Indiana bat (Myotis sodalist) is a mouse-eared bat that can be found in North America. Its range primarily includes eastern and Midwestern states, but it can be found in some southern areas of the United States. During the winter, its range becomes much smaller, with most populations occurring in large clusters in only a few caves. One study conducted in 1985 suggested that an estimated 244,000 individuals of this species reside in Indiana. Its range overlaps that of the endangered gray...
The greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) can be found in Japan, Africa, Europe, China, South Asia, Korea, and Australia. It prefers a habitat in warm regions, with open scrub and trees, human settlements, and bodies of water like ponds. It will also inhabit older orchards, glades within woodlands, and permanent pastures, among other areas. Many of its roosts occur in houses in the northern areas of its range and in caves in the southern areas of its range. These bats travel to...
The large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus) is a megabat that is can be found from the Malay Peninsula, to the Philippines in the east, with a southern range that included Timor, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. Its other common names include the Malaysian flying fox, the greater flying fox, the Kalong, or the Kalang. This Old World bat prefers a habitat within many areas including mangrove and primary forests, as well as fruit orchards with a variety of fruits. Depending on the location in which it...
The big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) is a vesper bat that can be found in many areas including Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Jamaica, Panama, and the United States. It can be found roosting in many areas including tree hollows, caves, barns, abandoned buildings, and window shutters. It is thought that these bats prefer to roost in natural structures like caves for the winter. During this time, the bats will hibernate, but if the weather is warm, flying about and even breeding can occur. There...
