Some people may look at bats and think that they are birds or even reptiles but bats are mammals just like we are. There are thousands of differnet types of bats in the world and some the largest can be found in the rainforest. Different bats have different diets, some species will eat only insects and can eat half their body weight in bugs each night, other bats dine only on fruit and are essential for spreading seeds throughout the rainforest. There is even one species of plant in the rainforest that is dependent on bats for pollination. Vampire bats eat blood from animals by making a small slit in the skin of the creature and lapping up the blood that comes out, luckily vampire bats haven't been know to attack humans and they don't take enough blood to hurt the animal. Some bats are carniverous and will eat mice, frogs and other small animals, there are even two species of bats that eat fish.
Contrary to popular belief, bats are not blind, most fruit bats even navigate through the air using only their sight. The reason many people believed that bats were blind is because they can fly in complete darkness without crashing into objects. The way that they can fly in the dark without hitting objects is through a process called echolation. Echolation is basically when a bat creates a high pitched sound which echoes off of objects, the bat knows how far away objects are by how quickly the sound reflects back to him. Some species of bats also use this system to locate and capture flying insects. Insects are captured in the wingtip and transferred to the mouth as the bat flies.
The bat is the only mammal able to fly, even though some mammals, like flying squirrels, seem to be able to fly, they are only gliding through the air on flaps of skin, like a kite. A bat actually flies like a bird and its wings are a web of elastic skin stretched over the bones its arms and the four elongated fingers of its hands.
Other Interesting Web Pages About Bats
The Flying Fox
Fruit Bats
Bats are Beautiful
Go back to Animals in the Rainforest
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