Only one percent of the world’s bats are carnivorous, but they are fierce, effective hunters. They’re also highly secretive – so secretive that people only relatively recently realized they were hunters and not blood feeders.
Ghost bats belong to a group of bats known as false vampires. “False vampire bat” is a term applied to five genera of bats found in Asia, Africa, Australia and Central and South America. Due to their large size and sharp teeth, early observers assumed they made incisions and fed on blood, like the famous vampire bat.
Ghost bats and other false vampires do not feed on blood. They hunt and eat large invertebrates, lizards, birds, rodents and even other bats.
Ghost bats were once found over a large swath of Australia, but they have disappeared from the interior of the country. They are now restricted to the tropical north. At around five inches long, ghost bats are the largest bat in the suborder Microchiroptera, also known as the microbats. They are the only carnivorous bat in Australia.
Their coloration varies, but many have a beautiful pale coat. In flight, this makes them appear like – you guessed it – ghosts.
https://blog.nature.org/science/2018/10/15/ghost-bat-meet-australias-false-vampire/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Due to a small but consistent influx of spam, comments will now be checked before publishing. Only egregious spam/illegal/racist crap will be disapproved, everything else will be published.