How Do Fruit Bats Work?

a half meters or longer. Most bats eat insects, often in copious amounts, and then you've got your big game hunters, bats who have evolved strong enough jaw muscles that they can kill off vertebrate prey such as fish, lizards, or birds. And of course, the blood drinking vampire bats from Central and South America need no introduction. But not all bats

are carnivores or vampiric. About three hundred species eat fruits and other plants to survive, which works out great for the rest of us because those flying creatures really help the environment. One of the most important families of bats is the terra Potidae, also known as the Old World fruit bats. They hang out in tropical and subtropical parts of Africa, Eurasia, Australia and many Pacific islands. I remember

those gentle giants we mentioned above. Those would be the flying foxes enormous terra pottids, who represent the largest bats alive today. A species called the giant golden crowned flying fox can weigh two and a half pounds that's over a kilo. It's a fruit eater of frugivore with a taste for fix for the article This episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with biologist Liam McGuire, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University. He said, Tea

pottids eat primarily fruit and nectar. For example, nectar from the flowers of eucalypt trees is a very important source for several species of flying foxes in Australia. But terrapottic diets can also include other plants, pollen, leaves, and sometimes insects. And now you might be thinking that the name Old World fruit bats implies the existence of New World fruit bats, and indeed the Americas have no shortage of these creatures.

The Philus domide is another large bat family, a one that's distributed across the neo tropics of North, South and Central America plus the Caribbean. While many species are committed insect hunters, dozens of these animals incorporate plant matter into their diets, and, depending on the batting question, fruits, nectars, pollen, or seeds may be fair game. Housta Works also spoke by email with Neberico Giannini, a mammologist and research associate

at the American Museum of Natural History. He said, frygivorous bats in both the Old World and the New World tropics eat a variety of fruits that tend to be scented, relatively large, green to yellow in color, and exposed away from branches and leaves. Bananas, mangoes, figs, and bates are all favorite foods for fruit bats. The Old World terra pottids alone feed on more than one thousand different plant species, and most of these sevent grow fruits that the bats

like to consume. Other plants may attract terra potted visitors because of their flowers, leaves, nectars, and sap shoots and tree bark are fair game as well. Usually the relationship has mutual benefits. Seeds swallowed by fruit bats get released somewhere else when the animals poop. According to study, Tropical bats in some parts of Mexico distribute more seeds in this manner than fruit eating birds do, and after a forested places devastated by wildfires, droughts, or human activities, fruit

bats help it bounce back. A research suggests that a colony of a hundred and fifty two thousand African straw colored fruit bats can distribute more than three hundred thousand seeds in one night. This could be enough to get the reforestation process started across some two thousand acres or eight hundred hectares of land. Flower and nectar eaters do their part as well. The bats are pollinators for upward of five hundred thirty types of plants such as palsa trees, bananas,

and assorted cactuses. And then we have agave, a key ingredient in tequila. A genus of migratory bats eat the nectar from their flowers. In the process, these mammals spread a gave a pollen around cross fertilizing the plants as they go. Worldwide, roughly a thousand species of bats find food and avoid obstacles easing echolocation. Echolocation is a sound

based navigating strategy. The process starts when an animal releases high frequency sound waves through the nose or mouth, and by carefully listening for an echo, the sender can decipher a lot about its surroundings. That's how some predatory bats track down moths and mosquitoes in pitch black darkness. Unlike insects, though a piece of fruit can't fly away regardless, Ginnini said,

all New World frugivorous bats use echolocation. This type is called sophisticated laryngeal echolocation, and it's essentially a laryngeal call emitted through the nostrils and modulated using a nose leaf. Nose leaves are weird structures found around the nasal openings of many bat species. Meanwhile, most Old World fruit bats do not echolocate, with a few interesting exceptions, McGuire explained. Among the Terrapodidae, there are bats that echolocate by clicking

their tongues. This mode of echolocation has often been considered primitive, but studies have shown that their tongue click echolocation is quite sophisticated. It. In addition, some Old World fruit bats make clicking noises with their wings. It's not at a location in the traditional sense, but echoes from those clicks help the animals get around to aid in their quest

for vegetarian goodies. Many fruit bats have evolved a keen sense of smell of flying foxes possess great eyesight as well, so much for the old myth that bats are blind. Today's episode is based on the article fruit bats are the best pollinators and suppliers of tequila on House to works dot Com, written by Mark Vancini. A brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang.

Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.