New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat (click image to enlarge)

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We are continuing our look at the World Cup, and with this particular entry, we have some officiating errors, just as they have in the soccer tournament. You see, I usually draw my bats the way they are usually photographed: maybe hanging upside down, probably crouched on a tree or something. I like drawing portraits, and besides, there aren’t that many great reference photos of flying bats available. But lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve been drawing the same few drawings over and over—the same monkey face, the same carnivore portrait, the same crouching bat—so this time, I decided to take the harder path and draw a flying New Zealand short-tailed bat. I gathered some reference for the particular species and some other reference for bats flying in general and cobbled together this drawing. It turned out okay, not spectacular, but not embarrassing. And then I started researching the species for my write-up.

And found out that this is a bat that doesn’t fly.

One of two species, out of more than 1,000, that can walk on the ground. (The other is the vampire bat, which I have already drawn; it’s all flying bats from here on out.)

And that’s the one I decided to draw flying.

It’s not that it can’t fly—I exaggerated when I said they don’t fly—but it does most of its feeding and foraging on the ground, and as MSNBC.com says, it’s an “odd creature” that “can walk on all fours and doesn’t get easily flustered.” Here’s a video from ARKive:

What’s neat is that it’s a bat that is evolving into a ground animal. That seems like a pretty good idea on an island like New Zealand, where the only mammals arrived there by air—the bats—or by sea—the seals—or else were introduced, like rats and livestock. That leaves a pretty good niche for a little ground mammal that eats insects and grubs, and that’s the niche the lesser short-tailed bat is filling. (Recent discoveries suggest, though, that the bat was already evolving in this direction before it arrived in New Zealand: a fossil found in Australia seems to be an ancestor of the New Zealand bat and is also adapted for walking).

So let’s just say that this soaring bat is experiencing a special moment in its life, just as the New Zealand soccer team did when it qualified for the 2010 World Cup, only its second qualification in its history (the other was in 1982). And New Zealand was undefeated in this World Cup! But the team’s three draws weren’t enough to get it out of the group stage, and so the All Whites (the country’s rugby team is the All Blacks, and the national basketball team, no fooling, is the Tall Blacks) went back home again.

The All Blacks—New Zealand’s rugby team—are known for doing a traditional Maori dance called a haka before games. I imagine it’s both intimidating to the opponent and energizing to the team. There was some talk of the All Whites doing a version at the World Cup, but as far as I can tell, they never did. So here’s a video of the rugby players’ haka from a game in South Africa.

Topi (click image to enlarge)

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Because I missed a few days and because if I don’t step on the gas the World Cup will end before the World Cup of Mammals does, tonight I’m posting the final three mammals of Group D (the other being Serbia’s marbled polecat from the other day). This first one is the topi (Damaliscus korrigum), an antelope representing Ghana. Ghana was the only African nation to make it to the Round of 16, in which they beat the USA. Ghana plays Uruguay in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Bechstein

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Die Bechsteinfledermaus (Myotis bechsteinii), of course, represents Germany and is known as Bechstein’s bat in English. It was named after a German naturalist named Johann Matthäus Bechstein. Germany beat England in the Round of 16 and is going up against Argentina in the quarterfinals on Saturday.

Long-nosed bandicoot (click image to enlarge)

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We must have a marsupial to represent Australia, and the long-nosed bandicoot (Perameles nasuta) has volunteered for the task. This bandicoot lives only in western Australia, and right now it’s widespread, but the rate at which its population is declining is a bit disturbing. Australia didn’t make it out of the group stage in the World Cup.

Group D Results

We read about how the marbled polecat is a virtuoso of killing, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it should win this group. Of the others, I think the topi has the edge because of its size and the hardness of its hooves. So the two mammals continuing on from Group D are:

Marbled Polecat (Serbia)
and
Topi (Ghana)

Mediterranean horseshoe bat (click image to enlarge)

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The Daily Mammal is celebrating the World Cup in the only way we can: by visiting with one mammal from each of the 32 participating countries. Today, let’s go to Greece! The Mediterranean horseshoe bat lives, yes, around the Mediterranean Sea, including in that land of olives and capers, Greece. The most pressing question about this bat is what’s up with that nose? Well, bats navigate by echolocation, of course, and horseshoe bats emit high-pitched noises through their nostrils and listen for the echoes to return to them. The going theory is that the rococo folds and petals of the bats’ noses help them focus the sound. I think their noses look like Georgia O’Keefe flowers…and you know what those are supposed to look like.

Now, Greece and the World Cup. Before this year, Greece only managed to qualify for the tournament once, in 1994. The team didn’t manage a single goal, though, and needless to say, did not make it out of the first round. Their first game in the 2010 World Cup, which they lost 2-0 to South Korea, seemed to indicate a continuing trend. In their second game, Greece gave up the first goal to Nigeria, and were once again behind. But then a Nigerian named Sani Kaita saved the day for Greece by getting himself sent off the pitch (don’t I sound like I know what I’m talking about?) about 30 minutes into the game.

In soccer, players who offend but not too badly are shown a yellow card and warned to knock it off. When they do something really uncalled for, reckless, unsportsmanlike, or violent, they are shown a red card and removed from the game. Then their team has to play with one fewer player than the other team for the rest of the game, and the offending player can’t play in the next game, either. After Sani Kaita’s ejection, everything turned around for Greece, and they would up scoring two goals: the first two goals they’ve ever scored in the World Cup. Here are the highlights (the red-carding comes at about 26 seconds in). Now, just like that, Greece can hope to advance to the Round of 16.

Coco drew a Mediterranean horseshoe bat, too. Didn’t she do a great job?

Mediterranean horseshoe bat by Coco, age 11

Hammer-headed fruit bat (click image to enlarge)

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Meet the male hammer-headed fruit bat, whose head, says Ivan T. Sanderson in Living Mammals of the World, “is almost beyond belief. That of an adult male looks just like the cartoon of a horse when viewed from the side.” The female hammer-head doesn’t deserve the name at all: her dainty foxlike face is like those of most fruit bats, and very different from the male’s.

The reason for this big honking snout is the hammer-heads’ fascinating mating behavior. During mating season, the males congregate in groups called leks, where they hang out and make a lot of noise, creating one rhythm with their calls while flapping their wings at double time. The females hover about judgmentally, paying repeat visits to certain of the males until they’re sure they’ve narrowed it down to the one they like best. Then they mate—a business of 20 or 30 seconds’—and the females take off. The lek lasts for nearly four months out of the year. And the bigger the muzzle, the better the nuzzle (har), as far as the female hammer-heads are concerned. They tend to like the same males as all their friends do, with just a handful of the menfolk doing all the mating.

Hammer-headed fruit bats aren’t the only animals that use lek mating. A few other mammals do, too, as well as a number of birds, insects, fish, and amphibians. The male hammer-head pays a price for his sexiness, though. Scientists speculate that the higher mortality rate among the males comes from the energy that they have to expend in their mating displays.

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This little brown bat, called the little brown bat—like our moon is called the moon—is quite a common fellow throughout most of North America. It eats a ton of insects every night—okay, not a ton, but at least a couple of grams, which is a lot for a little brown bat! It favors aquatically inclined insects, but will also munch moths and mayflies. It hunts through the night, coming out at dusk and returning home just before dawn.

The little brown bat is a true hibernator, but even true hibernators have to wake up occasionally. This guy, for instance, will hibernate for between a couple weeks and a few months at a time, repeating as necessary from fall to spring. Waking up occasionally may be a way for the bats to correct metabolic problems that arise from the very low body temperatures they maintain during hibernation. Hibernating little browns lose about half of their body weight and drop their body temperatures to about 10ºC (50ºF). Besides hibernation, little brown bats can use torpor, too (see yesterday’s post if you’re confused here!), on a day-to-day basis to conserve energy after fruitless, or rather bugless, nights of hunting.

Sadly, all is not well for the little brown bats currently hibernating in the northeastern United States. They are being ravaged by a strange disease called white nose syndrome. It first appeared in 2007, and it affects several species of bats in their hibernation roosts. Little brown bats, though, are sustaining the most deaths from the illness, which appears to involve a cold-loving fungus. The most obvious initial symptom is a fuzzy white growth around the nose and sometimes on the wings or other parts. Afflicted bats act very strangely, coming out of their roosts in the middle of day and the middle of winter. They seem to be starving and sometimes try to drink snow. And then they die.

The syndrome was first observed in upstate New York and has since spread to five other states. Just last week authorities confirmed the first cases of white nose syndrome in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. No one knows what’s causing it or how it’s spread…but it is spreading. Hundreds of thousands of bats have died from it over the last two years. The mortality rate in many affected caves is more than 90 percent. If we don’t figure this out, there’s a possibility that cave-dwelling bats, such helpful insectivores, could become extinct in the very near future, which would in turn have a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem.

There are two funds you can donate money to if you’d like to try to help the bats, one at Indiana State University and the other through Bat Conservation International.

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I drew a group of white tent bats in the very first Mammalthon, and I think learning about that species may have been the beginning of my current love for bats and for drawing them. Tressa saw that drawing and wanted a tent-making bat of her own, so these guys are for her. Thank you, Tressa, for giving these bats a home!

The common tent-making bat lives in central and South America, from Mexico to Bolivia and Brazil, and in Trinidad, too. They’ve been observed creating at least nine different kinds of tents from the leaves of at least five different plant families. Some of the styles of tents they make include (and this is all according to Walker’s Mammals of the World) conical, palmate umbrella, pinnate, and boat tents.

Walker’s says that making a tent can be a “long and arduous process,” but the good news is that a given tent will last a while—up to two months in some cases. The tents provide camouflage, shelter, a view, footholds, and a connection to the movements of nearby foliage.

Female tent-making bats roost together in a sorority-house tent, and the males roost either alone or in smaller groups.

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The Egyptian fruit bat (also called the Egyptian rousette) lives in the Middle East, Turkey, Cyprus, Pakistan, and India, and throughout Africa. It dines on fruits and nectars and helps to pollinate trees. Unfortunately, scientists confirmed last year that Egyptian fruit bats can carry the Ebola-like Marburg virus. Until then, the virus had never been found in animals other than primates, and the finding supports the theory that bats had infected two people in Uganda. Between 25 and 80 percent of people infected with Marburg virus die, it’s contagious, and there is no treatment.

Read about Marburg hemorrhagic fever on the World Health Organization website.