Deccan Herald » Open Sesame » Detailed Story

Furry in flight in the dead of the night!

Not all bats are blood sucking ones. Some are quite harmless, useful and cute too, writes Rachna Chhabria

They have always been associated with caves, ruins and dungeons, with horror movies, with witches and wizards and all things evil. At night, they come out in droves, hunting for their food. During the day, you can find them hanging upside down and catching up on their sleep.

Bats are the only mammals in the world that can fly like birds. A quarter of the world’s mammals are bats and if we add all the different kinds of mammals in the jungle, over half of them would be bats. Even though there are so many bats around, they are very hard to spot. As bats are nocturnal creatures, flying at night, hunting for food, they sleep in holes in the trees and in caves during the day.

Furry like a mouse, the wings of a bat are made of thin, leathery skin which is stretched across their fingers like material over the spokes of an umbrella. Some bats have really long ears, almost as big as their bodies and when these bats sleep, they tuck their ears under their wings. These are the Long-Eared Bats. Did you know that the wings of a bat have the same number of bones as our hand?

Bats can hear better than most mammals. To find another one in the dark, bats squeak. If a bat’s mouth is full (with a mouse or an insect), it will squeak through it’s big nose. Cute, isn’t it? Wish we could do the same, that is talk through our noses when our mouths are full. Sometimes, bats use their wings as scoops to catch flying insects. Clever, aren’t they? Can you believe that bats are conscious of their looks? They have thumbs which they use as combs to groom their fur. When they are not grooming themselves, these thumbs are used as hooks to hold on to things or to the branches of a tree.

Bats send out upto 200 squeaks a second. These squeaks are too high for us humans to be able to hear. When the squeaks hit an insect, they bounce back and this echo tells the bat where the insect is and what type of insect it is. The bat then chases the insect and snatches it up. All this can happen in less than half a second.

We are all familiar with the saying ‘As blind as a bat’. Bats are not blind. Many bats just don’t use their eyes to see, rather they use their voices and ears instead. American Fishing Bats make clicking noises as they fly over ponds and jungle rivers. When these sounds bounce back off ripples, they know that a fish is near to the surface of the water. Hearing this tiny echo, the bats swiftly swoops down to grab it’s meal with it’s huge upturned claws.

Bats have some of the funniest faces in the jungle. Many of them have very strange noses. The Hammerheaded Bat has a face shaped like a hammer. The nostrils of the Tube Nosed Bat are like two tubes. The Philippine Horseshoe Bat has a face that resembles a horseshoe. Some bats are called the Flying Foxes because they have fox like faces. And then there are the Hog Nosed Bats whose face resembles the features of a hog.

We have never realized that jungles might not have existed without bats. Fruit eating bats pollinate plants and the seeds they spit out or pass in their droppings grow into trees. Some bats are vegetarian like the Borneo Fruit Bat and the Flying Foxes. The Borneo Fruit Bat has a keen sense of smell as well as a good eyesight which help it find fruit and nectar in the dark. The Fruit Bats have only one baby at a time and the baby Fruit Bat is carried by it’s mother for eight weeks after it is born, then it learns to fly.

Some bats eat fruits, flowers, nectar and fish. While some others eat insects , mice and mosquitoes. Only the Vampire Bats love the taste of blood. Vampire Bats are known to slice open the foot of a sleeping chicken with their sharp teeth. Vampires bats can lap up one tablespoonful of blood at a time.

There are some bats who are so enterprising that they build a new house every night. These are the Camping Bats or the Tent Bats. These small white bats nibble through the middle rib of a palm leaf until it droops down to form a tiny tent. The bats then hang underneath it, out of wind and rain.

Acrobatic Bats are known for their speed. They fly in the sky at the speed of 55 kilometres per hour-fast enough to escape from owls. They are the fastest flying bats in the world.

Hog nosed bats can fit into the palm of a hand. It’s body is three centimeters long and with a wingspan of just 15 centimetres it is the smallest mammal in the world, weighing less than one grape. Now before you dismiss bats as evil and ‘ugh’ creatures, think again.