Land Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 16, 2005

Yikes! Vampire Bats Can Run, Too

As if nature really needed to endow vampire bats with anything more unusual than the ability to fly and a propensity to drink blood, the creatures have been found to sprint along the ground, too. All the better to sneak up on a victim, scientists say. A new study found...

Sep 14, 2005

Kinky Female Bats Share Mates With Their Mothers, Avoid Incest

Female greater horseshoe bats like to keep it all in the family - they share mates with their mothers and even their grandmothers - but, somehow they avoid incest, a new study reports. She won't mate with her father. But she will mate with her mother's partner - but only...

Nov 4, 2005

Behind the Recent Spate of Vampire Bat Attacks

Bites from rabid vampire bats were blamed for 23 deaths in northern Brazil over the past two months, according to local newspaper reports. Many scientists fear such encounters will become more common as the bats' forests homes are destroyed and they are lured towards cattle ranches and farms where livestock...

Dec 8, 2005

Smart Bats Have Smaller Testicles

For male bats, intelligence comes at a steep price. A new study found that bat species with large brains have smaller testicles. The correlation is likely an evolutionary tradeoff between having to maintain a large brain and producing lots of sperm, said Scott Pitnick, a biologist at Syracuse University in...

Dec 16, 2005

Bats Fly By Feel, Too

Bats may hunt by hearing, but a new study finds they have a feeling for flight, too. The theory--that bats fly by touch--was first proposed in the 1780s by French biologist Georges Cuvier, but it fell out of fashion in the 1930s when researchers discovered the creatures could navigate by...

Aug 8, 2006

Baby Bats Babble Like Human Infants

Baby bats babble just like newborn human babes, a new study finds. Babbling is thought to be a kind of vocal play that provides human infants a chance to train their vocal tract muscles in preparation for speech and to practice combining the syllables they will use as adults. Humans...

Nov 28, 2006

Bat's Wrinkly Face Improves Sonar

The strangely intricate wrinkles and grooves around the nostrils of many bats apparently could help them see in the dark by focusing their sonar, scientists in China have found. The discovery could help scientists improve sonar and radio technology, the researchers said. Bats are famous for their ability to see...

Jan 5, 2007

Newfound Bats are Real Suckers

In the world of bats, there was only one known sucker-foot. Now there are two. Scientists have discovered a second species of bat with adhesive organs, or suckers, attached to its thumbs and hind feet, allowing the creatures to climb and cling upright to smooth tree leaves. The new species...

Feb 18, 2007

Freaky New Bats Found by DNA Barcoding

Most species on Earth, including a number of bats, still fly under the radar of scientists, but a high-tech method that identifies animal species based on a snippet of DNA is starting to weed out concealed organisms. Two studies detailed in the current issue of the journal Molecular Ecology Notes...

Apr 10, 2007

Study Reveals How Drunken Bats Sober Up

Bats often risk getting drunk off cocktails of alcohol that stew inside ripened fruit. And just as driving is dangerous for intoxicated humans, so is flying for boozy bats. Now scientists find bats are savvy enough to dine on certain types of fruit sugar to help them get over the...

Aug 8, 2007

Bats Burn More Sugar Faster Than Top Athletes

Nectar-feeding bats burn sugar faster than top-class athletes, making them the fastest sugar-metabolizing mammals on Earth, according to a new study. Within minutes of stopping for a flower-power drink, these tiny mammals—typically found in South and Central America—start to metabolize the nectar. “To keep airborne is the most costly activity,”...

Aug 15, 2007

Thriving on Cattle Blood, Vampire Bats Proliferate

Vampire bats living in Costa Rica are growing in number as they are sucking their blood meals from cattle rather than wild rainforest mammals, a snack swap based more on accessibility than taste. A new bat-breath analysis study, published online in the Journal of Comparative Physiology B, reveals how the...

Feb 13, 2008

Early Bats Flew Without Navigation

Early bats could fly, but they probably had trouble knowing where they were going. Scientists have discovered the skeleton of the most primitive bat known. It had functioning wings but no ability to perceive space through echoes, as modern bats do. Unearthed in Wyoming, the near-complete fossilized skeleton dates from...

Feb 27, 2008

Air Bubbles Keep Bats Afloat

Bats shouldn't be able to hover in the air like bumblebees, at least according to current aerodynamic theories. But they do. To get to the bottom of the mystery — or the top of it, depending on your viewpoint — biologist Anders Hedenström of Lund University in Sweden put bats...

Apr 29, 2008

Bats Screech Louder Than Rock Concerts

Bats that weigh no more than a handful of coins screech 100 times louder than rock concerts, a discovery that could help design advanced robots. Not only are bats the only mammals that can truly fly, but most can take wing even when it is pitch black with the aid...