And they don't actually suck the blood like the legends suggest. As their name suggests, they drink blood, mainly from cattle and deer, which they find using specialized heat-detecting sensors near their noses. Vampire bats, though, like a different kind of juice. For example, some bats will squeeze fruits into their mouths and drink the juices. Echolocation allows the bats to tell how big and how far away an object is. They make high-frequency sounds then analyze the location of objects around them by perceiving how the sound bounces off the object. Bats can eat fast, too - the brown bat can eat up to 1,000 small insects in just one hour, according to the Defenders of Wildlife organization.īats use echolocation to "see" insects and other objects in the dark. But the vampire bat far exceeds even that, eating twice its weight in one day. Some bats have relatively large appetites, such as the Malayan flying fox, which eats about half its body weight every day. Megabats usually eat fruits, and microbats generally eat insects. Most bats eat flowers, small insects, fruits, nectar, pollen and leaves, though it depends on the type of bat. In the day, they sleep upside down, holding on to their roost with their sharp claws. Diet Some may fly up to 31 miles (50 kilometers) to find food during their nightly journeys. They generally live together in groups called colonies, which can contain anywhere from 100 to several thousand individuals.Īs nocturnal creatures, bats sleep during the day and are active at night. During torpor, a bat reduces its metabolic rate, lowers its body temperature, and slows its breathing and heart rates.īats roost in trees, caves, mines and barns - any place that provides shelter from the weather, protection from predators and seclusion for rearing their young. Some bats migrate to warmer areas, while others go into a short-term form of hibernation called torpor. These furry mammals don't have a lot of fat to keep them warm, and instead have two strategies for weathering the cold. They prefer warmer areas that are closer to the equator, and they can be found in rain forests, mountains, farmland, woods and cities. Bats live almost everywhere, except for some islands, and the Arctic and Antarctica.
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