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Habitat

Fosil

Bat

Classification andrevolution

Hunting, Feeding, anddrinking

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Bat Bats are flying mammals in the order Chiroptera (Theforelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings,making them the only mammals naturally capable of trueand sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly,such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, gliderather than fly, and can only glide for short distances. Batsdo not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but insteadflap their spread out digits, which are very long and coveredwith a thin membrane or patagium. Chiroptera comes fromtwo Greek words, cheir "hand" and pteron () "wing."

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There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide, which

represent about twenty percent of all classified mammal

species. About seventy percent of bats are insectivores. Most of

the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. A few species such as the

Fish-eating Bat feed from animals other than insects, with the

vampire bats being the only mammalian parasite species. Bats

are present throughout most of the world and perform vital

ecological roles such as pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit

seeds.

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Many tropical plant speciesdepend entirely on bats for the

distribution of their seeds.

The smallest bat is the Kitti'sHog-nosed Bat, measuring 29 34 mm(1.141.34 in) in length, 15 cm (5.91 in) across the wings and 2 2.6 g (0.070.09oz) in mass. The largest species of bat isthe Giant Golden-crowned Flying-fox,

which is 336343 mm (13.2313.50 in)long, has a wingspan of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in)and weighs approximately 1.1 1.2 kg (23 lb).

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Golden_crowned_fruit_bat.jpg

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Bats are mammals. Sometimes they are mistakenly called "flyingrodents" or "flying rats", and they can also be mistaken for insects and birds.

There are two traditionally recognized suborders of bats:-Megachiroptera (megabats)-Microchiroptera (microbats/echolocating bats)

Not all megabats are larger than microbats. The major distinctionsbetween the two suborders are:Microbats use echolocation: megabats do not with the exception of Rousettus and relatives.Microbats lack the claw at the second toe of the forelimb.

The ears of microbats do not close to form a ring: the edges areseparated from each other at the base of the ear.Microbats lack underfur: they are either naked or have guard hairs.Megabats eat fruit, nectar or pollen while most microbats eat insects; othersmay feed on the blood of animals, small mammals, fish, frogs.

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The phylogenetic relationships of the different groupsof bats have been the subject of much debate. The traditionalsubdivision between Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera

reflects the view that these groups of bats have evolvedindependently of each other for a long time, from a commonancestor that was already capable of flight. This hypothesisrecognized differences between Classification and evolutionmicrobats and megabats and acknowledged that f light hasonly evolved once in mammals. Most molecular biologicalevidence supports the view that bats form a single ormonophyletic group.

Researchers have proposed alternate views of chiropteran phylogeny and classification, but more research isneeded.

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Consequently, two new suborders based on molecular data have

been proposed. The new suborder Yinpterochiroptera includes the

Pteropodidae or megabat family as well as the Rhinolophidae,Hipposideridae, Craseonycteridae, Megadermatidae, and Rhinopomatidae

families. The new suborder Yangochiroptera includes all the remaining

families of bats (all of which use laryngeal echolocation). These two new

suborders are strongly supported by statistical tests. Teeling (2005) found

100% bootstrap support in all maximum likelihood analyses for the division

of Chiroptera into these two modified suborders. This conclusion is further

supported by a fifteen-base pair deletion in BRCA1 and a seven-base pairdeletion in PLCB4 present in all Yangochiroptera and absent in all

Yinpterochiroptera.Back Next

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Habitat

flight has enabled bats to become one of the most widely distributed groups of mammals. Apart from the Arctic, the Antarctic and a few isolated oceanic islands,bats exists all over the world. Bats are found in almost

every habitat available on Earth. Different species selectdifferent habitat during different seasons rangingfrom seasides to mountains and even deserts but bathabitats have two basic requirements: roosts, where they spend the day or hibernate, and places for foraging. Batroosts can be found in hollows, crevices, foliage, andeven human-made structures; and include "tents" thatbats construct by biting leaves.

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There are few fossilized remains of bats, as they are terrestrial and light-boned. An Eocene bat,Onychonycteris finneyi , was found inthe fifty-two-million-year-old GreenRiver Formation in South Dakota,United States, in 2004 and was addedas a new genus and placed in a new

family when published in Nature in2008. It had characteristics indicatingthat it could f ly, yet the well-preservedskeleton showed that the cochlea of the inner ear lacked development

needed to support the greater hearingabilities of modern bats.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Chiroptera.jpg

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The appearance and flight movement of bats 52.5 million years ago were different from those of bats today.Onychonycteris had claws on all five of its fingers, whereasmodern bats have at most two claws appearing on two digits of each hand. It also had longer hind legs and shorter forearms,similar to climbing mammals that hang under branches such assloths and gibbons. This palm-sized bat had broad, short wings

suggesting that it could not fly as fast or as far as later batspecies. Instead of flapping its wings continuously while flying,Onychonycteris likely alternated between f laps and glides whilein the air. Such physical characteristics suggest that this bat didnot fly as much as modern bats do, rather flying from tree to treeand spending most of its waking day climbing or hanging on thebranches of trees.

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Hunting, feeding, and drinking Hunting

Most bats are nocturnal creatures. Their daylight hours are spentgrooming, sleeping, and resting; it is during the nighttime hours thatthey hunt. The means by which bats navigate while finding andcatching their prey in the dark was unknown until the 1790s, when

Lazzaro Spallanzani conducted a series of experiments on a group of blind bats. These bats were placed in a room submerged in totaldarkness, with silk threads strung across the room. Even then, thebats were able to navigate their way through the room.

Spallanzani decided that bats were able to catch and find their prey through the use of their ears. To prove this theory, Spallanzaniplugged the ears of the bats in his experiment.

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Bats seem to use their ears to locate and catch their prey, but

how they accomplish this wasnt discovered until the 1930s,by one Donald R. Griffin. Griffin, who was a biology studentat Harvard College at the time, discovered that bats useecholocation to locate and catch their prey. When bats f ly,they produce a constant stream of high-pitched sounds thatonly bats are able to hear. When the sound waves producedby these sounds hit an insect or other animal, the echoesbounce back to the bat, and guide them to the source.

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Feeding and diet

The majority of food consumed by bats includes insects, fruits and flower

nectar, vertebrates and blood. Almost three- fourths of the worlds batsare insect eaters. Insects consumed by bats include both aerial insects,and ground-dwelling insects. Each bat is typically able to consume onethird of its body weight in insects each night, and several hundred insectsin a few hours. This means that a group of one thousand bats could eatfour tons of insects each year. If bats were to become extinct, the insect

population is calculated to reach an alarmingly high number.

Vitamin CIn a test of 34 bat species from six major families of bats, including majorinsect and fruit-eating bat families, found that bats in all tested familieshave lost the ability to make vitamin C, and this loss may derive from acommon bat ancestor, as a single mutation.

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Bat

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Thanks for your attention