Bats

The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
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Had an unusual opportunity to watch bats in action last night.

Under the street light only about 20 feet from our upstairs porch the termites were swarming. A pretty good mass of maybe 500. We've had a group of bats around here recently. About 8 of them became attracted to the termites and started working on the swarm. At first it was impossible to detect what was going on but when the swarm lessened to about 100 it was possible to watch the individual action. A bat would zoom in towards the swarm and one less termite. Watching individual bats coming in their aim was uncanny. A swerve and one less termite without ever missing. Slowly the swarm diminished until I could pick out individual aerial acrobatics. The bats weren't just taking the large ponderous termites but making several swerves as they circled about. Each swerve was another bug gone. I made a very rough count of 8 bats doing that swerve, a tiny alternation in their flight path, about 100 to 250 times a minute. Around 20 bugs per bat per minute.

After about 10 minutes the termites were gone. The bats worked on the smaller bugs and mossies for another minute or so then moved off to the next street light. I wonder what kind of camera would be able to catch action like that. Probably looking at 6 figures I suppose.

For the mechanically inclined... We all know how hard it is to catch a bug in mid air with your hand. Or even just touch one with a back hand slap. The you are with the fastest motion your body can come up with, a high speed third class lever. Now take into account an entire body with dozens of levers, neurological, sensory and mechanical functions interacting, detecting and moving into the path of the same flying insect, hitting every time. Bats are next to unreal.
 
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catfishrod69

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Man i love bats! When i was younger i had a chance to buy young fruit bats for $75 each. I didnt because i felt bad having to keep them in a cage their whole life. But now thinking back on it, im sure someone else did the same thing. Id still love to have some sort of bat, especially a fruit bat. If they made a fruit bat the size of a flying squirrel, that would be amazing!
 

The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
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Man i love bats! When i was younger i had a chance to buy young fruit bats for $75 each. I didnt because i felt bad having to keep them in a cage their whole life. But now thinking back on it, im sure someone else did the same thing. Id still love to have some sort of bat, especially a fruit bat. If they made a fruit bat the size of a flying squirrel, that would be amazing!
That very thought of these evolutionary apex of aerial acrobatics being caged makes me very sad.
 

Chris LXXIX

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I use Bats for get rid of mosquitoes. I have three Bats, living in the old farmhouse in my garden.
 

Liverwort

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This link shows that bats are more efficient fliers (in oxygen consumption) compared to birds: http://www.livescience.com/1245-bats-efficient-flyers-birds.html

However, just to be unbiased, I should tell you that another, more recent article from the same website showed that birds would fly 28% farther than a bat at the same speed and amount of fuel, or 41% faster at the same distance.

EDIT: I didn't actually find any paper supporting the oxygen consumption results in bats being more efficient than birds, but I have found the paper for birds being more efficient fliers than bats.

Also, cool gif of a vampire bat running :)

 
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The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
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This link shows that bats are more efficient fliers (in oxygen consumption) compared to birds: http://www.livescience.com/1245-bats-efficient-flyers-birds.html

However, just to be unbiased, I should tell you that another, more recent article from the same website showed that birds would fly 28% farther than a bat at the same speed and amount of fuel, or 41% faster at the same distance.

EDIT: I didn't actually find any paper supporting the oxygen consumption results in bats being more efficient than birds, but I have found the paper for birds being more efficient fliers than bats.

Also, cool gif of a vampire bat running :)

Very interesting. Taking a look at the physiology, birds have much greater muscle mass. Muscles in use being the primary oxygen consumer. Birds have evolved on extremely different lines than bats and evolvement always equates to greater efficiency. Essentially, both birds and bats fly but there the similarity stops. Some birds as swifts emulate that bat aerobatics but very poorly. Birds also have a much greater ability to store calories in their fatty tissues. Then looking at the aerodynamic properties, bird have air foils, bats don't. Bird wings have natural lift. Bats rely entirely on mechanics, forcing the air to move approximately the opposite of how a sail works.

But where bats diverge in the extreme from birds. The bird wing is essentially fixed. It can flex the general shape slightly and move the wing tip independently. The bat is able to control the shape of it's wings by flexing it's 'fingers'. Thus a bat wing can produce drag and lift at the same time. This is where it gets it's incredible maneuvering ability,
It is also this individual flexing of the parts of the wing that give the bat far faster acceleration. As a very rough example, a bat can accelerate to it's maximum velocity within a few seconds then reverse direction 180 degrees and again achieve it's maximum velocity, often in under 1 second. Then to add frosting to the cake, the bat has almost completely defied the law of inertia. To the degree that it has developed an encephalitic sack that cushions it's brain during those 100+ G maneuvers. G-force easily strong enough to kill any other animal.

So it's sort of impossible to compare bats and birds. We emulate birds with our various aircraft but we can't even begin to emulate the flight ability of a bat.
 
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eldondominicano

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Dec 8, 2014
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421
My Parents have a bat house attached to one of their storage sheds, they live in the northern Adirondacks, not sure the specific species of Bat, but they also took up homes between the ceiling and roof of their house.. Fascinating creatures. They aren't as prominent as they used to be in our area, but you still see them at dusk hovering over the lake and spinning around the trees looking for prey.
 

Liverwort

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Joined
Jun 6, 2015
Messages
39
Very interesting. Taking a look at the physiology, birds have much greater muscle mass. Muscles in use being the primary oxygen consumer. Birds have evolved on extremely different lines than bats and evolvement always equates to greater efficiency. Essentially, both birds and bats fly but there the similarity stops. Some birds as swifts emulate that bat aerobatics but very poorly. Birds also have a much greater ability to store calories in their fatty tissues. Then looking at the aerodynamic properties, bird have air foils, bats don't. Bird wings have natural lift. Bats rely entirely on mechanics, forcing the air to move approximately the opposite of how a sail works.

But where bats diverge in the extreme from birds. The bird wing is essentially fixed. It can flex the general shape slightly and move the wing tip independently. The bat is able to control the shape of it's wings by flexing it's 'fingers'. Thus a bat wing can produce drag and lift at the same time. This is where it gets it's incredible maneuvering ability,
It is also this individual flexing of the parts of the wing that give the bat far faster acceleration. As a very rough example, a bat can accelerate to it's maximum velocity within a few seconds then reverse direction 180 degrees and again achieve it's maximum velocity, often in under 1 second. Then to add frosting to the cake, the bat has almost completely defied the law of inertia. To the degree that it has developed an encephalitic sack that cushions it's brain during those 100+ G maneuvers. G-force easily strong enough to kill any other animal.

So it's sort of impossible to compare bats and birds. We emulate birds with our various aircraft but we can't even begin to emulate the flight ability of a bat.
Great post! I didn't know much about bats (or aerodynamics in general) other than "They have flexible wings vs rigid bird wings".

In the abstract the paper did say this: "Despite the differences in performance, the wake morphology of both birds and bats resemble the optimal wake for their respective lift-to-drag ratio regimes." I probably should've mentioned that in my original post!
 

Vinegaroonie

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Jul 2, 2013
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169
We're members of the local private beach here, and if you come out at night you can see 20+ of bats flying around by the lights. So fun to watch them fly.
 

The Snark

Dumpster Fire of the Gods
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We're members of the local private beach here, and if you come out at night you can see 20+ of bats flying around by the lights. So fun to watch them fly.
Good to hear of bats still present in So Cal.
 
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