Relative to pterosaur? Feed on blood? These are your misunderstandings about bats
In my country's traditional architecture and costume patterns, no matter whether it is "Fulu Shuangquan" or "Five Fortunes", the bat has always been a symbol of auspiciousness and happiness. However, in many parts of the world, it is regarded as an "ominous bird" and a "ghost in the dark".
In fact, bats are a common name for pterodactyls. There are about 1,390 species in existence. Since most of them are only active at night, people still know very little about them and they have deep misunderstandings, especially when each major epidemic comes.
Fossils 52.2 million years ago prove that the ancestors of bats are arboreal
As the only mammal that can be active in the air, bats are quite unique. Some people like to relate it to pterosaurs, but pterosaurs were all extinct at the end of the Mesozoic, leaving no living offspring. So far, paleontologists have never found bat fossils in the Mesozoic strata.
Some studies claim that modern mammals, including the pterodactylus where bats are, originated from the late Cretaceous 80 million years ago. Even if the conclusion is correct, it can only show that ancestors of bats were separated from other mammals in the dinosaur era. It’s impossible to prove that it evolved into a bat; some people say that bats evolved from mice, but through the evolutionary map of mammals, people can clearly see that bats and mice are separated after the extinction of dinosaurs. They are parallel. The evolved relationship, the mouse can not become a bat.
In fact, the climate of the early Cenozoic was warm. With the advent of the "Paleocene-Eocene Extreme Heat Event" 56 million years ago, the evolution of bats ushered in new opportunities. At that time, flying insects were particularly prosperous. In order to feed the flying insects, bats began to jump from tree to tree. In order to adapt to this new lifestyle, flying ability came into being.
Fossils of two particularly important types of early bats, the Ibex bat and the claw bat, were found in the Early Eocene strata 52.2 million years ago, proving that they had shown key features of flight at that time; such as the radius of the forearm It is fused with the ulna, and the 2nd to 5th fore toes are stretched to support the membrane covering. These findings strongly prove that the ancestors of bats are arboreal, and the flying ability comes from landing from the tree.
Echo location skills evolved more than 30 million years ago
There is a kind of flying monkey under the order of mammals Pteropteridae, which seems to be able to "fly", but it is far from the level of the bat kindergarten. Flying monkeys have a wing membrane that extends from the neck to the tail, but can only glide down from a high place for a short distance. They cannot fly from low to high like bats or birds. But bats are different. They can fly from the ground to the air. When flying in the woods and houses, they can surprisingly and sensitively avoid obstacles.
Because the wings of bats appear more than 100 million later than birds, the niche of larger flying animals is basically occupied by birds, which also forces bats to be different from birds. As the bat flies, it emits an ultrasonic wave from the throat, which is inaudible to the human ear, but the bat not only can hear it, but also can accurately receive the loop signal, and thus locate its position and flight direction; there are also some large fruit-eating bats Like the brown fruit bat, its ability to locate the echo is special, and uses the utterance of the tongue as the basis for sound localization.
The ability of echolocation is very important for the survival and reproduction of bats, so that it can occupy an niche that birds cannot use at night or in a relatively dim environment.
The frequency of most bat calls is between 20-60 kHz. But some bats with slower flight speeds can respond to high-frequency sound waves, which are also their "weapon" for survival. The bat evolved echo positioning skills more than 30 million years ago, but the prey was not idle. Some moths evolved a tympanic membrane to discover the bat's cry, while other moths made their own sounds, trying to disturb the bat's sonar system.
Defiled as "Vampire", in fact most of them feed on insects
In Western culture, bats are even stigmatized as "vampires." But in fact, of the 1390 species of bats, only 3 species will passively eat blood, and only one of them is aimed at mammals, and is limited to Latin America.
The vast majority of bat species feed on insects, including agricultural pests that are extremely harmful. Others feed on fruits, flowers, nectar, etc. and indirectly pollinate plants to ensure plant growth from generation to generation. About 528 tropical plants in 67 families are pollinated by bats, and more than 300 of them are fruit plants. A study in November 2019 confirmed that the three species of bats, the long-necked fruit fox, the central fox fox and the siribersley-toothed fox, pollinate durian flowers all year round.
The rare shovel-toothed bat is only distributed in Peru and is the only bat pollinator of several columnar cacti in Peru. The baobab tree in the savannah of East Africa is essential for the survival of animals. It is called the “African Tree of Life”, and it relies almost entirely on bat pollination. Without bats, the tree of life could be extinct.
The bat's credit goes beyond this. Bats have similarities with migratory birds and can fly thousands of kilometers. While bats eat the fruits of plants, they also spread seeds to various places, which ensures the diversity of regional species. Studies have confirmed that they spread much more seeds than birds, and many bats spread the earliest seeds grown in harsh environments.
Therefore, some scientists pointed out that bats can help maintain the ecological balance of the forest and can provide delicious durian fruits to people. Humans should recognize the importance of bats to avoid hunting and destroying their habitats.
Our reporter Zhao Hanbin