The thing about bats is that they have the superpower you always wanted but will never have.
Nope, it’s not blood-sucking (actually bats lap blood, much like a dog laps water – which admittedly, if you really wanted to lap some liquids you could…). And it’s not even echolocation (because, let’s face it, screaming high-pitched noises ALL THE TIME to see where you’re going has to get old).
It’s flight. True, sweet, powered flight. Like Superman. Like Wonder Woman. Self-powered, point your nose in the air, and go wherever you want to, flight.
Yeah, yeah, you say –but birds have flight too. Why not be envious of our feathered friends? Well, because of just that – birds are feathered, and their whole means of flight is so vastly foreign to mammal anatomy and physiology that it’s hard to be jealous of birds. They have hollow bones, auto-pumping lungs that inhale and exhale with flight strokes, and feathers for goodness sakes!
Nope, it’s not blood-sucking (actually bats lap blood, much like a dog laps water – which admittedly, if you really wanted to lap some liquids you could…). And it’s not even echolocation (because, let’s face it, screaming high-pitched noises ALL THE TIME to see where you’re going has to get old).
It’s flight. True, sweet, powered flight. Like Superman. Like Wonder Woman. Self-powered, point your nose in the air, and go wherever you want to, flight.
Yeah, yeah, you say –but birds have flight too. Why not be envious of our feathered friends? Well, because of just that – birds are feathered, and their whole means of flight is so vastly foreign to mammal anatomy and physiology that it’s hard to be jealous of birds. They have hollow bones, auto-pumping lungs that inhale and exhale with flight strokes, and feathers for goodness sakes!
Bats, on the other hand, are all mammalian innovation. Their wings are made of skin stretched across elongated fingers – the Latin name that all of science uses for bats is Chiroptera, or “hand wing”. Remember that time when you were a kid and you grabbed two hand-held fans and flapped them as hard as you could so that you could fly? (Oh wait, was that just me?). As you may or may not have found out – fan flying doesn’t work for human children. But ooooooh if only I had hand-wings! You see, bat wings are the only evolutionary answer for powered flight in mammals that has EVER evolved (that we yet know of). Flying squirrels glide. Colugos glide. It turns out that the adaptation of skin stretched between wildly modified fingers was the trick – none of that skin flap between the forearm and the hind leg stuff has the umph for powered flight.
And here’s another thing, although powered flight is an extremely rare trait in vertebrate evolution (it has only evolved twice – once in birds and once in bats) it has conferred an incredible evolutionary advantage as evidenced in the diversity of bird and bat species! Of the approximately 24570 known terrestrial vertebrate species, birds comprise nearly half of those species (ringing in at a hefty 9998 species)! And out of 5490 known mammal species, 20% are bats!! One might easily infer that flying opened up a whole new world for bats and birds – one that allowed many species to fill in unused niche space. And the result of all of this niche filling? Bats eat everything under the sun – from fish to frogs to nectar to flowers to bugs to blood, bats as a phylogenetic group have the highest diversity in foraging habits of any comparable terrestrial vertebrate group (i.e. at the Order level). And the fact that bats eat bugs, seeds, and pollen, should not go unnoticed – if it weren't for bat-aided agave pollination there would be no tequila! And if it weren't for the thousands of bats in your back yard there would be millions more mosquitoes! Stay tuned to this blog, in fact, for more on bats and pest control ….
So back to superpowers. My final thoughts on bats for the New Year are these. Before you get caught in yet another bat-fearing slump as you read about Ebola and bats, consider this: bats may have the superpower you always wanted, but you have the ONLY superpower that may save bats: your giant brain. You see, wildlife can’t help the fact that it might carry-human communicable disease. And bats can’t help that little children make games of killing them and adults like eating them. Humans must protect themselves against bat-borne disease by using their own Professor X- like superpower. Step one, stop killing, eating, and otherwise antagonizing bats for fun. Step two, like Charles Xavier, we must use our brains to inform and reach out to those in need -- we must support communities in the tropics in their efforts to change these human behaviors that not only destroy wildlife and wild resources, but endanger human lives. Although I would gladly give my own brainy superpower up for flight (all those brain-associated emotions and responsibilities really can be a drag), I feel so fortunate to be able to use my brain for the benefit of truly admirable superheroes of the mammalian realm: bats!
So back to superpowers. My final thoughts on bats for the New Year are these. Before you get caught in yet another bat-fearing slump as you read about Ebola and bats, consider this: bats may have the superpower you always wanted, but you have the ONLY superpower that may save bats: your giant brain. You see, wildlife can’t help the fact that it might carry-human communicable disease. And bats can’t help that little children make games of killing them and adults like eating them. Humans must protect themselves against bat-borne disease by using their own Professor X- like superpower. Step one, stop killing, eating, and otherwise antagonizing bats for fun. Step two, like Charles Xavier, we must use our brains to inform and reach out to those in need -- we must support communities in the tropics in their efforts to change these human behaviors that not only destroy wildlife and wild resources, but endanger human lives. Although I would gladly give my own brainy superpower up for flight (all those brain-associated emotions and responsibilities really can be a drag), I feel so fortunate to be able to use my brain for the benefit of truly admirable superheroes of the mammalian realm: bats!