class Mammalia
order Chiroptera



Diet - varied. fruit, insects,nectar, meat, fish, birds
Habitat: caves, trees, houses,underbridges
Preditors - humans
Gestation period - 100 to 125 days
No of young - 1 per year
Lifespan: 20 - 30 years

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Bat Facts

Nearly 1,000 kinds of bats account for almost a quarter of all mammal species and most are highly beneficial.
A single little brown bat can catch 600 mosquitoes in just one hour.
Tropical bats are key elements in rain forest ecosystems, which rely on them to pollinate flowers and disperse seeds for count- less trees and shrubs.
In the wild, important agricultural plants, from bananas, bread- fruit and mangoes to cashew, dates and figs rely on bats for polli- nation and seed dispersal.
Bat droppings in caves support whole ecosystems of unique organisms, including bacteria useful in detoxifying wastes, im- proving detergents, and producing gasohol and antibiotics. An anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human heart patients. Contrary to popular misconceptions, bats are not blind, do not become entangled in human hair, and seldom transmit disease to other animals or humans.
All mammals can contract rabies; however, even the less than half of 1% of bats that do, normally bite only in self-defense and pose little threat to people who do not handle them.
Bats are exceptionally vulnerable to extinction, in part because they are the slowest reproducing mammals on earth for their size. Most produce only one young a year.

Echolocation is the use of ultra-high frequency sounds for navigation. Bats and dolphins are able to use sound to "see". In bats, the sounds are made and sent out by their noses. The sounds bounce off things in their surroundings like insects or branches. The reflected sounds, or echos, are picked up by the bats sensitive ears. Bats can tell how far something is by how long it takes the sounds to return to them. You can easily see if a bat uses echolocation. These bats will have large ears and leaf-shaped structures around their nose. Using sound, fishing bats, can find the fin of a fish above the water in complete darkness!

What does a bat look like?