Posts tagged as:

bat

Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)

by JR Kinyak on October 5, 2011

in Bats

Mexican free-tailed bat (click image to enlarge)


Mexican free-tailed bat by Theo, age 15


Mexican free-tailed bat by Coco, age 12


0395

The kids and I are reading a book called Hanging with Bats, which starts with a chapter about the Mexican free-tailed bats at Carlsbad Caverns here in New Mexico. We decided to draw the bats, and then my son Theo wrote a poem to post on the Daily Mammal.

I think I may have mentioned, on this site, Thomas Nagel’s famous essay “What is it like to be a bat?” in which he explains that it is difficult (impossible?) for us to even imagine it, using the human-bat disconnection as an example of the inherent shortcomings of subjective experience in understanding objective truth. (I think that’s what it’s about.) As Nagel says, “In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.”

Theo’s poem, though, tries to help our imaginations, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

Through Tiny Eyes

Imagine
Screeches coming back at you, directing you
Imagine
Air flowing through your fur while slicing through air
Imagine
Air holding you airborne
Imagine
Hanging upside down,
huddling in the warmth of thousands of you
Imagine
Using your hands to cover your entire body
Imagine
Making an image of a black tornado
coming out of the black depths of a cave
Imagine
Being a bat

Tagged as: bat, books, coco, people, theo

{ 6 comments }

Mating Week: Gambian Epauletted Bat (Epomophorus gambianus)

by JR Kinyak on March 3, 2011

in Bats,Theme Weeks

Gambian epauletted bat (click image to enlarge)


0354

Last June, I drew the hammer-headed fruit bat, which is known for its lek mating system. The Gambian epauletted bat, today’s mammal, uses a similar lek system. In Courtship in the Animal Kingdom, Mark Jerome Walters explains leks:

In some animals, however, males offer neither defense of the females nor any particular resource. There is no trade-off of riches, nor any guarantee that the male will help raise the offspring. Such males gather merely to display themselves. The group display is known as a “lek”—a word thought to have come from the Swedish for “sport” or “play”—and the tree, pasture, or other area where they display is known as an “arena.”

According to Walters, male Gambian epauletted bats “gather at dusk, inflate elastic cheek pouches, and emit a singsong honking sound audible for 200 yards or more. The male then unfurls tufts of white hair from pockets on each shoulder—hence the name. These epaulets are thought to contain pheromones. Wafted off into the twilight by the male’s gently flapping wings, they may help to attract a female.”

How neat, isn’t it? They have pockets on their shoulders, from which they unfurl tufts of hair, and then flap their wings to send their pheromones off as an only subconsciously perceptible advertisement for their charms. The males get to the arena as the sun sets, and the females keep them waiting until 11. Then the females get there and hover in front of each male in turn, checking out the epaulets and honking. After they make their choice and mate, the males “retire exhausted by 3 a.m.”

Tagged as: bat, mating

{ 3 comments }

Wrinkle-faced Bat (Centurio senex)

by JR Kinyak on February 28, 2011

in Bats,Theme Weeks

wrinkle-faced bat

Wrinkle-faced bat (click image to enlarge)


0351

When I drew this guy, I was working on a Mammal Mating theme week, but that was several months ago, and now I can’t figure out what’s interesting about the wrinkle-faced bat’s mating habits, except that scientists speculate that the wrinkled face may be related to sexual selection. Only the males have big neck flaps, and they emit a musky odor from their chin regions, and why would males emit a musky odor from their chin regions if not to attract females?

The flaps at the male bats’ necks are so big that when they’re resting, they flip the flaps up to cover their entire faces. I thought it might be to keep light out so they could sleep better during the day, but then I learned that they have translucent patches over the eyes! Pretty amazing.

This article from the Journal of Zoology (link is to a PDF) uses words like bizarre, extraordinary, unusual, exceptional, enigmatic, and dramatic in describing the bat’s strange face and head. The wrinkle-faced bat is frugivorous, meaning it eats fruit, and the article’s authors conclude that it’s likely that the shape of the head, anyway, is in service of the bat’s strong bite, which perhaps helps it eat harder fruits and therefore survive when weaker-jawed frugivores wouldn’t. Usually, when a bat has strange facial folds, it’s thought that the wrinkles help focus the bat’s sonar so it can better catch insects. But this fruit-eater obviously doesn’t need that kind of help. I read one theory speculating that the wrinkles could channel fruit juice into the bat’s mouth.

The scientific name Centurio senex means “100-year-old man.”

Tagged as: bat, evolution, mating, names

{ 4 comments }

World Cup: The Rest of Group D

by JR Kinyak on June 28, 2010

in Bats,Marsupials,Theme Weeks,Ungulates

Topi (click image to enlarge)

0325

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

0326

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)

0327

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)

Tagged as: antelope, bat, World Cup

{ 4 comments }

World Cup: Greece’s Mediterranean Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus euryale)

by JR Kinyak on June 18, 2010

in Bats,Theme Weeks

Mediterranean horseshoe bat (click image to enlarge)


0317

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

Tagged as: bat, coco, World Cup

{ 5 comments }

Hammer-Headed Fruit Bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus)

by JR Kinyak on June 3, 2010

in Bats

Hammer-headed fruit bat (click image to enlarge)


0298

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.

Tagged as: bat, ivan, mating

{ 3 comments }

Hibernators Week: Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus)

by JR Kinyak on February 3, 2009

in Bats,Theme Weeks

click image to enlarge

0221

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.

Tagged as: bat, hibernation, threats

{ 4 comments }

← Previous Entries