|
How Can So Many Bats Coexist?
Handley and Kalko say it's partly because bats have specialized diets. Different species eat insects, blood, small vertebrates, fruits, or nectar and pollen. In a 10-year study of fruit-eating bats, they found that where several species in a community eat the same fruit, each relies on a different hunting technique or fruit size. Big bats eat large fruit, little bats the smaller fruit. One species sniffs out figs beneath leaves, while another uses high-frequency sound waves, or echolocation, to detect fruit dangling in the open.
| Back to Portraits | Vertebrate Zoology Home Page |