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bat

Common Tent-Making Bat (Uroderma bilobatum)

by JR Kinyak on January 6, 2009

in Bats

click image to enlarge

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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.

Tagged as: bat

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Mammals of Iraq: Egyptian Fruit Bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus)

by JR Kinyak on August 3, 2008

in Bats,Theme Weeks

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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.

Consecutive days of mammals: 2
Record: 16

Tagged as: bat, humans

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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

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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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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

click image to enlarge

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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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