Bat
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Bats are mammals in the order Chiroptera. Bats are the only mammals that can fly. (Other mammals like flying squirrels, or flying possums look like they can fly, but they can only glide in the air for short distances.)
Contents |
[edit] Taxonomy
- Order Chiroptera
- Megabats (Megachiroptera)
- Microbats (Microchiroptera)
[edit] Appearance and Life
Bats fly with their wings, that are made of skin stretched between the bones of the bat's arms and fingers.
Most bats are active during the night, the dusk or the dawn. Some of them use echolocation. This means instead of using their weak eyes, they have special body parts they can use to find their way around by bouncing sound waves off of objects, like a radar.
Megabats eat fruit, nectar or pollen. Most microbats (7 out of 10) are insectivorous (they eat insects), but some microbats eat small vertebrate animals (small mammals or fish), blood, or even other bats.
There are over 1,100 different kinds of bats. All these different kinds of bats are thought to make up as much as 20% of all mammal species.
[edit] Gallery
 A Megabat. |
 A colony of Megabats. |
 A colony Microbats. |
 A Microbat. |
[edit] Links
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