From the category archives:

Bats

Great Stripe-Faced Bat (Vampyrodes caraccioli)

by JR Kinyak on June 24, 2008

in Bats

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I chose this bat completely at random from among all the mammals with species accounts in Mammalian Species. It’s a leaf-nosed Central and South American bat, and it’s frugivorous, another wonderful adjective from the world of biology: it eats fruit. The great stripe-faced bat enjoys a veritable tropical fruit salad, dining on papayas, figs, and bananas that it forages for in the forest canopy. In fact, this bat, along with other frugivorous bat species, is a very important spreader of fruit-tree seeds.

Consecutive days of mammals: 4
Record: 16

Tagged as: bat

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Mammalthon 2: Western Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus hesperus)

by JR Kinyak on May 6, 2008

in Bats, Mammalthons

click image to enlarge

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Here’s a little bat for Melinda! In fact, the western pipistrelle is the smallest bat in North America—far, far smaller than the drawing I made of it.

Here’s a nice little article about western pipistrelles by Merlin Tuttle.

Tagged as: bat

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Mammalthon 2: White-Winged Vampire Bat (Diaemus youngi)

by JR Kinyak on May 3, 2008

in Bats, Mammalthons

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Good thing I drew this so early, while it’s still light out, or we’d all be too scared to continue! It looks like this guy is in Joe’s bedroom, getting ready to bite while Joe sleeps peacefully. Luckily for Joe, however, white-winged vampire bats get the blood they drink mostly from birds. When the white-winged vampire bat spots a likely target—perhaps an oblivious guinea hen resting on a branch—the bat slowly, carefully creeps along the branch until it can reach the bird’s foot. It starts by licking the foot a few times, then makes an incision with its teeth. It then licks some more to get the blood. If the bird notices this and starts, the bat hides under the branch until the bird calms down and then continues feeding! This all lasts about 15 minutes, at which point the vampire bat flies away.

Check out New Mexico’s own Rancho Transylvania, dedicated to a colony of white-winged vampire bats (they don’t, however, live in New Mexico ordinarily, but rather in tropical South America). You will especially want to look at the photo gallery of baby white-winged vampire bats, which are extremely adorable, it turns out.

Now I must go have my own lunch. I think I hear a bird on the tree outside…

—————-
Now playing: Great Lake Swimmers – The Animals Of The World
via FoxyTunes

Tagged as: bat

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Daily Mammal Now: Indiana Bat (Myotis sodalis)

by JR Kinyak on April 10, 2008

in Bats, Mammal News

The second Daily Mammal 24-Hour Mammal Extravaganza is coming April 19! Reserve your own special mammal now: just click the “donate” button in the right-hand navigation bar. Get an original, custom-made work of art and help animals at the same time!

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Today is the inaugural installment of a new periodic Daily Mammal spotlight feature, which I’m calling Daily Mammal Now. (I admit that I got the idea from Dr. Phil’s “Dr. Phil Now.” I just don’t have the newsy-sounding arrangement of my theme song to play for these special “Now” episodes. In fact, no theme song at all.) Daily Mammal Now (like Dr. Phil Now) will focus on mammals that have been in the news. If you see a mammal in the news, please drop me an e-mail or comment on this site to tip me off! Get the scoop if you have a nose for news!

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article called “Bats Perish, and No One Knows Why.” Alarmingly, certain populations of bats in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts have been stricken with what they’re calling White Nose Syndrome. Is it a virus? Is it caused by exposure to a toxin? Is it bacterial? Well, no one knows. What they do know is that it makes the bats very thin and sometimes spotted with a white fungus. Since last winter, it’s been killing bats who should have been peacefully hibernating. Instead, they’re staggering out of caves and mines in broad daylight in the dead of winter and dropping dead. One scientist quoted in the article calls them “dead bats flying.”

This particular bat, the Indiana bat, has been on the federal endangered species list for four decades now. The major threats to its survival are human-caused: commercialization of the bats’ cave habitats, pesticides, “human disturbance,” and the like. While some Indiana bat populations seemed to be on the upswing, now White Nose Syndrome threatens to knock them back down again. Scientists fear that the syndrome could cause extinctions of several species.

The phenomenon reminds me of Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious catastrophe that has been killing bees, and the lethal fungus that attacks frogs. Unlike Dr. Phil on his topics, there’s not much I can say about these strange syndromes. I’m baffled, and all I can do is read the news and see what happens. What do you think?

Tagged as: endangered, now, threats

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Newly Described Mammals Week: Alpine Long-Eared Bat (Plecotus alpinus)

by JR Kinyak on February 21, 2008

in Bats, Theme Weeks

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Here’s another one that was discovered to be a species through DNA, at least I think that’s what happened. I’m sorry to say that I’m a little too bushed to figure it all out right now. I’ll leave that to you, if you care to download the PDF of the 2002 article that described this little guy for the first time. Plecotus alpinus, my friend, I am sorry that your roll of the 5,000-sided die came up this month, when I cannot give you the time I ordinarily (I hope) would be able to, but it had to happen to someone.

Here is a fact I learned while researching Mr. Alpine Long-Eared Bat, though. See the long, sort of triangular-shaped things on the front of his ears? Those are called tragi (singular tragus). The word comes from the Greek tragos, or goat, which my dictionary explains thusly: “with reference to the characteristic tuft of hair that is often present, likened to a goat’s beard.” I think it’s likely that the triangular-shaped things we have in front of our ears are also tragi, although neither we nor the Alpine long-eared bat have the characteristic tuft of hair.

Homepage of Andreas Kiefer, one of the professors who first described this bat

Tagged as: bat, discovery, dna, words

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North Carolina Week: Evening Bat (Nycticeius humeralis)

by JR Kinyak on January 29, 2008

in Bats, Theme Weeks

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All week on The Daily Mammal we’re looking at mammals of North Carolina. Evening bats, like this one here, live throughout the eastern United States in the lower elevations, and they’re particularly common in the southeastern states, like North Carolina. They’re similar to brown bats but much smaller—their bodies are only about four inches long and their wingspans are less than a foot. They roost mainly in buildings, but also in tree cavities and underneath loose bark; you may find them in a bat house every now and then. They eat insects—they love moths, junebugs, and beetles.

It’s rare to spot a male evening bat in the northern parts of its range, and we’re not completely sure exactly what the bats do during the winter. Reports of winter sightings in the south indicate that they probably migrate. In the short time I’ve been working on The Daily Mammal, I have been continually surprised by the things we don’t know, the mammals we’ve never seen, the adaptations we can’t explain, the behavior we’re not sure about. Maybe it’s because there’s so much flashy news about technology and quantum physics and whatnot that I’ve tended to assume that we know pretty much what there is to know about the more basic facts of life on earth. It’s so amazing and magical that there’s still so much mystery to figure out just by looking closely.

Take this mammal home with you!

Tagged as: bat

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Large Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus)

by JR Kinyak on December 23, 2007

in Bats, Mammalthons


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For Ted, a Large Flying Fox! These are really huge bats, with wingspans up to 6′! I had to draw two of them because I couldn’t decide whether to highlight its size in flight or its beautiful face. And it’s the last of the 24 mammals, which is actually making me a little sad!

I have two questions for any bat experts who are reading this. First of all, do bats sleep with their eyes open or are they just very light sleepers who wake up when someone comes near with a camera?

Also, pictures of the flying fox from the ventral side, when its wings are spread out and all, make it appear as though it’s wearing little rectangular pants! What are those??

—————-
Now playing: Merle Haggard – I Think I’ll Just Stay Here And Drink
via FoxyTunes

Tagged as: bat

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