Land Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 28, 2015

Bad-Rap Bats in Danger of Extinction Around the World (Photos)

Ricardo Antunes is a conservation biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). He has extensive field experience studying marine mammals across the globe. Julie Larsen Maher is staff photographer for WCS, the first woman to hold the position since the society's founding in 1895. In addition to documenting her field...

Sep 6, 2016

Are Bats Really Blind?

Bats hunt in the dark using echolocation, meaning they use echoes of self-produced sounds bouncing off objects to help them navigate. But that doesn't mean that bats can't see. Contrary to myth, bats aren't blind. In fact, research shows that depending on the circumstances, bats sometimes prefer using eyesight to...

Sep 9, 2016

Bobblehead Bats: Head Waggles Help Catch Prey

A puppy expecting a treat might cock its head to the side in anticipation. It turns out that bats make similar motions, and for very good reason. New research published Sept. 8 in the journal PLOS Biology finds that bats waggle their heads back and forth to listen for approaching...

Jan 17, 2017

Well, That Sucks: Vampire Bats Found Drinking Human Blood

Unlike mythical vampires, vampire bats do not prey on humans — or do they? Scientists have found the first evidence of vampire bats supping on human blood. Diphylla ecaudata, also known as the hairy-legged vampire bat, inhabits forests in northeastern Brazil and is one of three species of vampire bats...

Aug 1, 2017

In Photos: Rare Conjoined Bats

Conjoined twins (Image credit: Dr. Nadja L. Pinheiro)These conjoined bat twins were discovered under a mango tree by a boy in 2001 in southeastern Brazil and recently studied by a research team seeking to learn more about this unusual phenomenon. This is only the third pair of conjoined bat twins...

Oct 26, 2017

Why Bats Are So Good at Gulping Down (Halloween) Prey

Catherine Haase is a postdoctoral researcher at Montana State University, working with WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society). Haase contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Imagine eating all of the candy you acquire on Halloween each year in a single night. If you're a bat and winter's...

Aug 29, 2019

In Photos: The Eerily Beautiful Bats of Arizona

Growing scientific research (Image credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)When thirty-five year old C. Hart Merriam came to the Colorado Plateau in 1890 he was already an accomplished zoologist, mammalogist, ethnographer and naturalist. He had helped found the National Geographic Society in 1888 but he was now back in the...

Apr 10, 2020

6 new coronaviruses discovered in bats

Scientists have discovered six entirely new coronaviruses lurking in bats in Myanmar. These viruses are in the same family as the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is currently spreading across the globe; but the researchers said the newbies aren't closely related genetically to SARS-CoV-2 or to the two other coronaviruses that cause...

May 26, 2020

Why bats don't get sick from the viruses they carry, but humans can

One of the first questions scientists ask when a new disease appears is, Where did this come from? Many viruses jump from animals to humans, a phenomenon known as zoonotic spillover. Although it remains unclear which animal was the source of the current coronavirus pandemic, all the attention is on...

Nov 16, 2020

World's ugliest bats sing through 'face masks' made of skin to woo the ladies

If you had a face as puckered as a wrinkle-faced bat's, you too might hide behind a mask to seduce a mate. When breeding time rolls around for male wrinkle-faced bats (Centurio senex), they gather together in groups and cover the lower half of their remarkably wrinkly faces with white-furred...

Dec 28, 2020

Bats are superheroes of the night. Their superpowers could help us protect them.

Many of us might struggle to see a moose on a moonless night, let alone a mosquito. But some bats have a nifty trick — they use their ears to locate their bug prey. It's not that bats can't see — many have excellent full-color vision — but most don't...

Oct 30, 2021

Vampire bats' 'missing' genes may help them survive on all-blood diet

Vampire bats have an unusual, blood-only diet that's high in protein but lacking in other nutrients. Now, a new study hints that missing genes may explain how the flying mammals survive on nothing but blood meals, lapped from their victims' open wounds in the dead of night, The Scientist Magazine...

May 9, 2022

Bats tell predators to 'buzz off' — literally

To avoid being snagged in the talons of a ravenous owl, the greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) mimics the intense buzz of an angry hornet and thus scares off its potential predators. This is the first known example of a mammal (in this case, a bat) mimicking an insect (a...

Dec 5, 2022

Scientists unlocked the secrets to bats' heavy metal growls

Bats are known for making high-pitched calls that they use for echolocation. But bats are also capable of producing extremely low-pitched growling sounds much like the snarling vocals of death metal singers — and now, scientists know how bats do it. Like death metal vocalists, bats achieve these low frequencies...

Apr 12, 2023

52 million-year-old bat skeleton is the oldest ever found and belongs to a never-before-seen species

Two stunningly preserved, 52 million-year-old bat skeletons unearthed in Wyoming are the oldest ever found and belong to a never-before-seen species, researchers have revealed. The rare fossils were discovered in the Green River Formation in the southwest of the state. The newfound species was slightly smaller than the closest known...