Bats

Bats

Bats
Richard Griffin
Term Paper
Home school
4/27/2007
My term paper over bats will begin with the anatomy of bats and how they are different from birds and pterodactyls in both flight and wing structure. I will then go into habits of bats, then food and hunting skills, the variations between fruit bats pollen and nectar bats and the vampire bats’ skull shape and how it effects how it eats, then myths about bats and the truth behind them, finishing with a list of traps used for collecting wild bats and my opinion over my favorite bat out of the 900+ known species, the vampire bat.

Bats in general are a remarkable animal in my personal opinion and are very misunderstood and thought of (by most people) as a nuisance, but I will show by the end of this report that they are in fact very helpful and interesting creatures of the night. I’ll start with the anatomy of bats in general as they vary by bat but they do have some similar characteristics. The wings for example are what set bats from birds or pterodactyls, while bird wings are just bones specifically designed to hold feathers to allow lift and thrust, the bats are actually skin attached to the fingers and hand all the way to the very body of the bat. The stippled part of the wing is used for thrust while the clear parts near the body itself is used for lift which gives the bat a very unique way to fly and has fascinated scientists and bat lovers for years. Because of the differences in wing structure, a bird will start off fast and upward but slow down after time, a bat however will start off slow and downward while speeding up; more like a hand glider leaving a platform and diving to gain speed than a jet leaving a landing strip; giving it a very big advantage as to hunting, It can “see” its prey using ultrasound (I will touch that more later) and line up the prey before speeding up to snatch it out of the water or off a tree or plant before its victim even knows what happened. Bats however do have a...