Fun Facts and Taxonomy of Bats

When people think of bats they usually think of Batman or vampires, or some nasty animal that flies around at night and carry rabies. However, bats consume more than their body weight in insects every night. Also, bats are the only mammal that has ever learned to fly, but instead of using their entire arms to fly like birds, they fly using their wrists on their hands. When it comes to a bats diet, not all bats are created equally. Some bats eat fruits, while others eat insects, and a few bats that do in fact, drink blood. Regardless, they all have a remarkably similar reproduction strategy.

Bats are polygynous, the most common form of polygamy, with one male having multiple mates, with some species guarding their female bats against other males. Bats also have low reproduction rates and usually only has one baby a year. Some bats the mother can not leave the baby bat behind. So the mother has to be able to fly with her latched on baby. However, this put an immense strain on the mother who still has to feed herself to survive. Luckily, bats have a long lifespan. One hypothesis is that in order for the species to continue to survive bats evolved to have a long life spans to combat their slow reproduction rates (Feldhamer 2007). However, this was not a conscience decision for the bats.

Bats are from the order Chiroptera, which includes 20% of all mammal species (Feldhamer 2007). This order is so vast, that two suborders were created. The two suborders are Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera.

The Suborder Megachiroptera make up fruit bats and contain the largest bats. Larger bats usually only eats fruits, which restricts them to tropical climates where potential food is continuously growing. Many bats from this suborder are even active during the day; however, these bats have simple echolocation. Regardless, since their food source, fruit, does not move, echolocation is not as heavily used, as it is for the suborder Microchiroptera.

Microchiropteran are made up of 17 families, and have a very diverse diet, unlike the megachiropterans that only eat fruit. Insectivore bats eat all types of flying insects at night, with moths being the staple of their diet. While they are known to eat mosquitos, the little insect is too small to have enough nutrients to chase down every little bloodsucker, however, when mosquitoes are swarming in a group, a bats will quickly find them. The bats that drink blood are called vampire bats, but they are not all evil. If a vampire bat does not get enough to eat one night, another bat will regurgitate its food to feed the other, however, when the tables are turned the other bat is expected to reciprocate the gesture. Also, unlike the megachiropterans, microchiropterans are equipped with advanced echolocation (Feldhamer 2007). The only other mammals to have echolocation as advanced as bats are whales and dolphins.

Feldhamer, George A. Mammalogy: Adaptation, Diversity, Ecology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. Print.