bats

Bats

Anthropoid (5)
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Rabbit (106)
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Tarsier (6)
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Viverrine (47)

and perhaps the most disgusting is the male greater sac-winged bat, Saccopteryx bilineata. Colonies of up to 60 of these bats are found from northern Argentina to southern Mexico.

This continues until both sacs have a sufficient amount of bat perfume. The process lasts 30 to 60 minutes.

Voigt and other bat scientists think that the perfume must therefore play other social roles,

more generally oe plays a fundamental role in the social communication of this species. It also means that bat noses,

whether there might be potential in"eau de bat Â, Voigt describes its smell as sweetish, with a touch of bitter almond.

In fact, a surprising amount of wildlife now depends on the human-made environment, from the clouds of huge Sydney fruit bats to London's wily foxes,

#Wind Turbines Contributing to Decline of Bat Population Wind turbines are a major threat to bats.

Researchers urged policy-makers not to wait before addressing the issue of bat decline. Not acting is not an option because the life histories of these flying,

According to the researchers, a single colony of 150 big brown bats in Indiana ate almost 1. 3 million potentially damaging insects a year.

Geology. com). 2.)Being#oeblind as a bat#means not being blind at all. While many use echolocation to navigate,

</p><p>White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that has devastated bat colonies across North america within the past decade or so killing up to 90 percent of some populations of little brown bats.</

I tell people right off the bat if you want a dog-park-type dog a dog you can just run off-leash please do not get a pit bull Ami Ciontos founder

In 2012 scientists found yet another type of BAT called beige fat which is a subset of brown fat

but that demands a high-burning capacity that BAT probably doesn't have. Capsinoids appear to induce brown fat in the same way as cold by capturing the same cellular system that the body's nervous system uses to increase heat production Yoneshiro said.

#Flying foxes (Actually Bats) on Remote Island Studied for First time Flying foxes? Not really foxes. They're actually bats (and one of those animals with a pretty misleading name.

Flying foxes are the largest bats On earth and consist of more than 60 species that live throughout remote islands of the Indian

Â Pteropus pelagicus a relatively small species of flying fox with a wingspan of about 2 feet (61 centimeters) inhabits the western Pacific Mortlock Islands within the Federated States of Micronesia.

flying fox population in an effort to catalog more details about how this enigmatic creature lives.

The team also found that the bats breed year-round on the islands which separates them from most other flying fox species

Most flying foxes are seasonal in breeding patterns and maybe give birth to young over a couple month period Wiles said.

Some cultures hunt flying foxes and consider them a delicacy but residents of the Mortlock Islands do not generally hunt the animals the researchers say.

There are about 1200 species of bats in the world 20 percent of all known mammal species. The largest bat is the flying fox with a wingspan of six feet the smallest is the bumblebee bat that weighs less than a penny.

Two-thirds of bat species feed on insects and other small prey. Many bats are on nighttime pest patrol.

One Mexican free-tailed bat can eat about 1000 mosquitoes per hour. The large colony of 30 million bats in Bracken Cave in Texas consumes about 250 tons of insects every night.

Just 150 big brown bats can eat 33 million root worm pests. Without bats there would be more pests

Other bat species feed on flowers and fruits acting act as pollinators and seed dispersers especially in deserts and rain forests.

There also would be no tequila the agave plant from which tequila is made depends on the Mexican long-tongued bat to pollinate it.

and maybe building a bat house for your yard. Bats also are vulnerable to being killed by wind turbines.

That risk can be reduced through careful siting of wind-power developments away from important bat roosts

Another nefarious threat is white-nose syndrome a disease that is wiping out many bat populations in North america.

Bat-Killing Fungus Likely Invaded from Europe For more on the challenges facing bats see a video with Hoekstra here.

He also approached the practice of hitting a baseball as a science even attending physics lectures at MIT to better understand the dynamics of swinging a bat.

He ended up bonding with his bat rather than with other people. The benefits of mental illness There's a large and growing body of research devoted to the link between successful high-achieving personalities and some degree of mental illness.

when they sense a bat's sonar clicks. Earthworms flee the vibrations of oncoming moles.

Sometimes as a real treat we ate the occasional fruit bats they caught. They would singe the fur off in the fire and then skin out the meat.

However Maratus vespertilio is probably a close second. I do think it is extraordinarily cute and

AMNH/R. Mickens) Townsend's Big-eared bat The Townsend's big-eared bat has a face only a mother could love.

and the hundreds of other bat species. They shouldn't be. These bats would never attack a person there's no reason for them to do so said Micaela Jemison a bat ecologist

and author of a bat blog called theinvertedperspective. com. They'd only come near people if they are hunting the insects that are congregating around lights.

Bats do us a great service in eating insects like mosquitoes and agricultural pests. They are an important part of our environment.

Flying foxes (Genus pteropus) are the largest bats. Some species have wingspans of 5 to 6 feet (1. 5 to 1. 8 meters)

and weigh up to 2. 2 lbs. 998 grams) according to the Oakland Zoo. One of the smallest megabats the long-tongued fruit bat (Macroglossus minimus) has a wingspan of only 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) according to the Smithsonian Institution.

This bat weighs about half an ounce (14 g). Among microbats the largest species is the false vampire or spectral bat (Vampyrum spectrum) with a wingspan of up to 40 inches (1 meter.

It weighs 5 to 6. 7 ounces (145 to 190 g). The smallest bat is the bumblebee bat according to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.

It grows to only about 1. 25 inches long (3 cm) and weighs about 2 grams (0. 07 ounces).

Bats live all over the world except for some islands and the Arctic and Antarctica. They mostly prefer warmer areas that are closer to the equator

In this short-term form of hibernation a bat reduces its metabolic rate lowers its body temperature and slows its breathing and heart rate.

and leaves though it depends on the type of bat. Megabats usually eat fruits and microbats generally eat insects.

The Malayan flying fox has a big appetite. It can eat half its body weight every day. The vampire bat outdoes even that though eating twice its weight in one day.

The brown bat can eat up to 1000 small insects in an hour according to the Defenders of Wildlife organization.

Some bats will squeeze fruits in their mouths and drink the juices. Vampire bats like a juice of a different type though.

They do indeed drink blood mainly from cattle and deer but they don't suck blood like the legends say Rather they make A v-shaped cut and then lick up the blood according to the San diego Zoo.

Bats have some unique mating behaviors not seen in other animals. Male and female bats meet in hibernation sites called hibernacula where they breed.

Bats'swarm'around in huge numbers chasing each other and performing spectacular aerobatics biologist John Altringham told Live Science in a 2013 article.

Researchers have found that female short-nosed fruit bats perform oral sex on their mates to prolong the act;

male Indian flying foxes do the same thing to females. Mating occurs in the late summer and early autumn

Many bat species around the world are threatened with extinction. The Red List from the International Union for Conservation of Nature identifies more than 250 species as endangered vulnerable or near threatened.

Bulmer's fruit bat is the world's most endangered bat. It is only found in one cave in Papua new guinea.

Research at the University of Bristol in the United kingdom published in 2011 in the journal Behavioral Processes shows that the angle at which sound bounces back can tell the bat the object's size.

Some horseshoe bats can hover and pluck insects from spider webs according to the BBC. An anticoagulant in vampire bat saliva has been adapted for use in increasing blood flow in patients with stroke or heart disease

#Banned Drone May have damaged Yellowstone Spring The U s. National park service has an important message for visitors: Leave your drones at home!

However male lactation seems to be common only in dayak fruit bats though it's not yet clear why males of this species have the biology to spontaneously produce milk.

If Ebola virus was introduced into Guinea from afar the more likely traveler was a bat he said.

wrinkle-faced bat (Centurio senex) has been an enigma to biologists for a long time. Now, a team led by Elizabeth Dumont at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst has discovered that the oddly-shaped skulls include jaws that are more powerful than not just other fruit bats but also much larger predatory bats,

which need to be able to sink their teeth into tough hides. When I first saw them I thought

which is roughly 20%stronger than that of any other known bat of the same size and approaches the strength of some of the strongest predatory bats.

West africans at risk from bat epidemics: Nature Newsserious viruses carried by bats pose a considerable risk to people in West Africa,

warn epidemiologists cataloguing bat-human interactions in the region. Bats are thought to have been the source of several of the nastiest viruses to jump to humans from animals during the past 40 years,

but in 2008 the team reported finding antibodies to them in Eidolon helvum fruit bats in Ghana, West Africa, indicating that these bats had been infected too1.

Patients and doctors are showered daily with bat urine which could be infected with the virus. Such huge colonies in residential areas are uncommon in Asia and Australasia.

were collected from a survey of 551 Ghanaian bat hunters, vendors and consumers. There is a massive bat-bushmeat industry in Ghana that has not been picked up in previous studies of the bushmeat trade

says Cunningham. All this adds up to a potentially disastrous public-health problem in West Africa, says Cunningham and one that is currently not recognized

Berna and his colleagues searched the sediments for bat faeces, because large piles of rotting guano can become hot enough to ignite spontaneously.

Thanks to good old Barry Bonds who used maple bats in his 2001 marathon home-run season players increasingly favor the lighter wood which according to one collector just has more pop than other bat

The scientists found that the more the cut of the wood strayed from the original grain the more likely the bat was to shatter The New york times reports.

The baseball league altered regulations to require that the grain in the bat not deviate from the original grain of the wood by more than 3 percent as well as adding minimum densities and weight-to-length ratios.

when they are hit by these bats. why not just laminate the bat? kinda like a car window or bullet proof glass glazing?

Seems to me many shards are likely coming from the inside core of the bat (judging by the picture.

What laminating materials could be used that would not significantly improve the desirable characteristics of an ordinary wood bat?

the bat might just look shiny due to a glossy effect of the resin. Polyurethane could also work. thats the stuff bedliners are made out of...

although the bat might look plasticized after. too thick of a coating may have an affect on the bat.

#Culling vampire bats to stem rabies in Latin america can backfireculling vampire bat colonies to stem the transmission of rabies in Latin america does little to slow the spread of the virus

Vampire bats transmit rabies virus throughout Latin america causing thousands of livestock deaths each year as well as occasional human fatalities.

since the 1960s in attempts to control vampire bat populations but those culling efforts have failed generally.

Last year a team of U-M researchers and their University of Georgia colleagues reported the results of a long-term vampire bat field study in Peru.

and data from infection studies using captive vampire bats to show that culling has minimal effect on containing the virus

The findings suggest that geographic coordination of vampire bat control efforts in Latin america--taking into account the interconnectedness of seemingly isolated colonies--might reduce transmission to humans and domestic animals.

The team's new paper scheduled for online publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec 2 also establishes that rabies is usually not lethal among vampire bats.

In the paper last year we demonstrated that bat colony size wasn't a predictor of rabies prevalence

Developing effective control strategies for vampire bat-transmitted rabies virus in Latin america requires an understanding of the mechanisms that have allowed the highly virulent pathogen to persist

Then they tested the models against data from the University of Georgia-led field study of rabies exposures in wild vampire bat colonies across Peru.

That study tracked rabies exposures in individually marked Desmodus rotundus vampire bats from 17 colonies in four regions of Peru between 2007 and 2010 and yielded the most complete dataset on rabies exposure patterns ever collected for any bat

and the most successful models demonstrated that a single isolated vampire bat colony cannot maintain the rabies virus over time Frequent movement of infectious bats between colonies is needed to keep the rabies virus at levels consistent with the field observations.

The critical role of immigration between bat colonies predicted by our analysis indicates that current culling practices often reactive to outbreaks in livestock

or haphazardly implemented are unlikely to eliminate VBRV (vampire bat-transmitted rabies virus) the researchers said. While programs targeting specific colonies may limit local spillover from bats to humans

or domestic animals regional viral persistence will likely remain unaffected due to high connectivity between bat colonies Rohani said.

The bat study's other main finding is that the vast majority of rabies virus exposures among vampire bats--in

which an infectious bat bites a susceptible individual--are nonlethal and actually immunize the bitten bat

thus helping to prevent colony extinction and sustain the virus. The probability of a vampire bat developing a lethal infection upon exposure to rabies is around 10 percent much lower than the 50-to-90 percent mortality rate seen in previous experimental challenges studies that involved inoculating vampire bats with rabies virus

according to the researchers In Latin america coordinated efforts to eliminate human rabies transmitted by dogs began in 1983 and led to a roughly 90 percent reduction in human and canine rabies according to the U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since 2000 vampire bats have been the leading cause of human rabies there especially in remote areas of the Amazon region in Peru Ecuador and Brazil according to the CDC.

The combination of large vampire bat populations and frequent contact with livestock contributes to losses of about $30 million annually in Latin american livestock mortality Of more than 1200 species of bats worldwide only three are vampires

and all three live in Latin america according to Bat Conservation International. Two of the species feed primarily on the blood of birds

and one--the common vampire bat D. rotundus--prefers mammals especially livestock. Common vampire bats hunt only when it is fully dark

and listen for the regular breathing sounds of sleeping mammals which serve as their main food source.

Once a target is located the bat lands and approaches it on the ground. Vampire bats use heat sensors on their nose to locate warm spots where blood flows through vessels near the skin's surface.

They use razor-sharp upper incisors to create small wounds. An enzyme in the saliva prevents clotting as the bat feeds

and a specialized groove in the tongue keeps blood flowing without the need for sucking

Movies notwithstanding vampire bats do not suck blood. They lap it like kittens according Bat Conservation International.

Worldwide more than 55000 people die of rabies each year according to the World health organization. More than 95 percent of the human deaths occur in Asia

They did however come across additional evidence that the U s. strains share several genetic features with a bat coronavirus--findings which point to an evolutionary origin from bats and the potential for cross-species transmission.

and the Museum fuì r Naturkunde Berlin the new study reveals that two bat-infecting parasites are closely related to parasites in rodents that are used commonly to model human malaria in laboratory studies.

The DNA from several genes of the bat parasites was sequenced at the Museum's Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics resulting in the most comprehensive evolutionary tree of life for malaria parasites of bats to date.

and Plasmodium cyclopsi show patterns of evolutionary jumps from the rodent lineage into bats and then likely a reverse jump with a bat parasite reinfecting rodent hosts.

The authors suggest that the bat hosts which roost in trees may have been exposed to the same mosquito vectors that transfer the parasites between the tree-dwelling rodent hosts.

'Only by viewing forest sites along a gradient of logging disturbance ranging from pristine to heavily degraded were the team able to detect a gradual decline of some key bat species. The research confirmed the most vulnerable bats were those that tend to live in the cavities of old growth trees.

By linking bat captures with vegetation measurements from nearby plots the researchers were able to reveal how these animals declined as successive rounds of logging took their toll on forest structure and crucially the availability of tree cavities.

or manure on the fields shipped in bat dung from islands in the Pacific or saltpeter from Chilean mines and plowed in glistening granules of synthetic fertilizer made in chemical plants.

The study is an important step toward treating WNS according to Mylea Bayless Bat Conservation International's director of conservation programs in the U s. and Canada.

A marked decline in bat populations in the eastern United states was documented in a study published last month in PLOS One by Sybill Amelon a research biologist with the Forest Service in Columbus Mo

The study found cumulative declines in regional relative abundance by 2011 from peak levels were 71 percent for little brown bats 34 percent for tricolored bat 30 percent in the federally-listed

endangered Indiana bat and 31 percent for northern long-eared bats. In 2009 researchers identified the culprit behind WNS as a member of the genus Geomyces resulting in its name Geomyces destructans or G. destructans.

#Bechsteins bat is more Mediterranean than originally thoughtalthough the Bechstein's bat is regarded as a Euro-Siberian species a study by researchers in the UPV/EHU's Department of Zoology

The Bechstein's Bat (Myotis bechsteinii) has a broad distribution: from the Iberian peninsula to the Caucasus in the East and as far as southern Scandinavia in the north.

and degradation of the forestry systems can have on the populations of forestry specialists like the Bechstein's bat.

Ulanovsky chose to study the Egyptian fruit bat a very common bat species in Israel. Because these are relatively large the researchers were able to attach the wireless measuring system in a manner that did not restrict the bats'movements.

Ulanovsky in cooperation with a US commercial company created a wireless lightweight (12 g about 7%of the weight of the bat) device containing electrodes that measure the activity of individual neurons in the bat's brain.

which tracked wild fruit bats using miniature GPS devices. One of the discoveries was that when bats arrive at a fruit tree they fly around it utilizing the full volume of space surrounding the tree.

To simulate this behavior in the laboratory--an artificial cave equipped with an array of bat-monitoring devices--the team installed an artificial tree made of metal bars

when the bat is located in that area. Together the population of place cells provides full coverage of the cave--left and right up and down.

#Bat disease: More accurate, sensitive DNA test allows early identification of fungus causing white nose syndromeeven after researchers studying White Nose Syndrome (WNS) established that a fungus called Geomyces destructans is at the heart

either on a bat or in soil has been difficult and time consuming because a variety of closely related Geomyces species found where bats hibernate have the potential to cause false positives using previous DNA testing.

study findsa survey of bat activity in burned and unburned areas after a major wildfire in the southern Sierra nevada mountains found no evidence of detrimental effects on bats one year after the fire.

The study led by bat ecologist Winifred Frick of the University of California Santa cruz was published in the journal PLOS ONE on March 6.

or positive impacts on a suite of bat species Frick said. Studies that show how animals respond to fire help inform the ongoing public policy debate over the role of fire in ecosystem management

The study compared bat foraging activity in areas of unburned moderately burned and severely burned forest.

Of the 16 bat species known to live in the area some have distinctive sonic signatures

and coauthors Paul Heady of the Central Coast Bat Research Group and John Hayes of the University of Florida also contributed to the study.

A single brown bat will eat its body mass equivalent in insects in one summer night Cornelison said.

In collaboration with University of California-Davis he found the bacteria prevented the spread of fungi on bat skin without touching the skin.

Cornelison's research is funded by the U s. Forest Service and Bat Conservation International. Story Source:

#Take the bat, leave the candy: The food environment of youth baseballâ#Take me out to the ballgameâ##doesnâ##t exactly conjure up images of apple slices and kale chips.

The study focused on bat populations within a mosaic of forest fragments and farmland in Costa rica and on islands in a large lake in Panama.

The researchers also did a meta-analysis of 29 studies of more than 700 bat species to bolster

For example the island theory predicted that the Costa rican coffee plantations would have inadequate habitat to sustain a single species of bat.

In reality plantations in the countryside typically supported 18 bat species compared to the 23 to 28 supported by tropical forest fragments and nature reserves.

marine turtles fruit bats free-range pigs and chickens rather than primarily relying on growing crops for human food and animal fodder.

and consuming wild animals--especially fruit bats--and that whatever horticultural food they produced was relied not heavily on she says.

#Market forces influence value of bat-provided services, such as pest controlservices provided by Mother Nature such as pest control from insect-eating bats are affected by market forces like most anything else in the economy a University of Tennessee Knoxville study finds.

There are more than 1200 bat species and two-thirds of them are insectivorous which means they help farmers by preying on pests and reducing the need for insecticides.

The researchers calculated the value of the bat pest control service each year from 1990 through 2008 by estimating the value of avoided crop damage and the reduced social and private costs of insecticide use in the presence of bats.

when ecosystem function in this case bat population numbers may remain constant said Mccracken. The findings fuel a discussion as to

The researchers point to mounting evidence of the evolution of pest resistance to Bt cotton suggesting that the value of bat pest control services may increase again.

The researchers also unveiled an engineering model of a skull that can be manipulated computationally to morph into the shape of any New world Leaf-nosed bat species to help uncover evidence for selection in long-extinct organisms.

Nectar feeding bats comprised one of three evolutionary optima for mechanical advantage among New world Leaf-nosed bats. Photo credit:

The key finding is that in a highly diverse group--New world Leaf-nosed bats--selection for mechanical advantage has shaped three distinct optimal skull shapes that correspond to feeding niches Dr. DÃ¡

The research team investigated adaptive radiation--the explosive evolution of species into new ecological niches powered by natural selection--of New world Leaf-nosed bats.

The researchers first built the three-dimensional finite element model to simulate bat skulls with myriad combinations of snout length and width.

and engineering (dark blue) models for the base model of the omnivorous bat Carollia perspicillata (B) and the morphed models for the nectar-feeding Glossophaga soricina (A)

and the specialized fig-eating Short-faced bat Centurio senex (C). They then analyzed the models to determine structural strength and mechanical advantage--the efficiency and hardness of the bats'bite.