A new study shows that for such little-known mammalian bats, their older females are stronger than their young males.
The baby bat ranges in size from 2.5 cm to more than 12 cm, and the fake vampire bat in the picture inhabits the Yavari River in Peru.
Photographed by AMAZON-IMAGES MBSI, ALAMY
Written by Rachel A. Becker
Bats are only the size of bumblebees? This is no joke, there are many kinds of bats that are petite guys.
There are about 1,000 species of "small bats" (Note: bats are mainly divided into suborders of large bats and suborders of small bats), and the body size varies from 2.5 cm to 12 cm. These rich and diverse creatures account for 17% of the earth's mammal species.
Draft: National Geographic
Source: THEANIMALFILES.COM; APPLE
"If you haven't seen them before, you'll be surprised at how tiny their bodies are." Pia Lentini, a bat expert at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said, "Many small bats have very flat faces. ”
But because these tiny creatures live in the dark, little is known about baby bats, and their daily lives remain a mystery to scientists.
Today, bat populations are declining in many parts of the world, and a new project based on centuries of research has created a model to predict how bats will survive in the future.
White-nosed syndrome, which originated from the deadly fungus, is destroying millions of baby bats in North America. The reason for the decline in these mammal populations is due to human development activities, such as light pollution and wind farms.
But without more detailed information about bats and their ecological status, conservationists working to protect bats have no way of knowing how threats adversely affect bat lifespan.
"That's the main motivation behind our research." Lead author Lentini said her study was published aug. 4 in the journal Biology Communications.
"Let's try to figure out the commonalities between these bat species and see if we can predict the new species of bats and what their future survival will be."
For example, the study found that female bats with a large number of litters had a higher annual mortality rate than their smaller litter-producing counterparts.
Small figure, hard to find
Although the little bat is small in size, it has many cute places.
These organisms use echolocation skills to prey on many insects, including pests, such as mosquitoes. They also pollinate plants, such as the tequilas necessary to make tequila.
For small animals, they can be regarded as an amazing longevity. Lentini said the longevity record for wild bats is 41 years old, which contradicts people's notion that "small creatures grow fast and die early."
Merlin Tuttle, a bat expert and founder of the International Bat Conservation Organization, said little is known about the longevity of baby bats, in part because of their notorious poor research.
Tuttle said the lack of research is not only because baby bats are nocturnal, but also because every time individual bats are captured for examination, or disturb them during hibernation, it "increases the probability that small bats will learn to avoid us, or die prematurely." ”
"Old and strong"
To address this problem, Lentini grouped the 44 bat species documented in the scientific literature by body size, food source, sex, number of litters per year, and place of life.
She then fed these features into a model to predict how long bats with similar traits would live.
In India, a fake vampire bat catches mice.
Photo by Stephen Dalton, MINDEN PICTURES/CORBIS
She and her colleagues found that age and gender are good indicators of longevity. For example, older females are stronger than young adult males.
But the factor that most affects the lifespan of small bats comes from their diet, and small bats that eat fruit live longer than those that eat insects, probably because fruit-eating bats are exposed to predator-threatening environments less than bats that hunt insects.
Similarly, bat pups can weigh up to one-third of a mother, which places a great burden on mother bats, which may explain why bat mothers who produce more litters have a shorter lifespan than those who give birth to fewer litters.
Finally, her team studied a population of wild Gould's wattled bats near Melbourne, Australia, and found that their longevity matched the data in their model.
Next research goal: feces
Tuttle said the main challenge with the study is that predicting any aspect of bats based on existing research would be fraught with problems.
Bats behave very diversely and malleably, he said, even in bats of the same species. "We have to be very careful when we do modelling, because what we can see is nothing more than a drop in the ocean compared to the overall behavior or the survival of the population." he said.
For Lentini, her next step is to figure out what the little bats eat. "I happen to have a student analyzing bat feces." She said.
(Translator: King of Hearts)