Bats have small, but perfectly good eyes. They can see in daylight, just like other mammals, but have very poor vision and cannot see well in the dark. They fly and locate food using a system called echolocation.
Some inscet-eaters have acute hearing. Huge, sensitive ears are used for hearing moths and beetles. Fruit bats have much smaller ears; they use their eyes and nose to find food.
The greater horseshoe bat is adept at catching a wide variety of night-flying insects, such as moths. The bat traps prey in its mouth or scoops it out of the air with its wings.
The fabric of the wings is a thin meshwork of muscle strips covered by skin. The wings are elastic and supple, enabling the bat to perform acrobatic feats in pursuits of its prey.
Bats are quite clumsy on land. Their hind legs are primarily adapted for use as wing supports, and only the foot can be used for movement.
Bats are furry animals that usually look like mice. They vary in size. The smallest have bodies 1.5 inches long with a wignspan of about 6 inches. The largest may be 12 inches long and have a wingspan of 6 feet. Some bats, depending on the shape and length of their wings, can fly as fast as 15 mph. The smaller ones fly around 5 to 8 mph.
Bats have nocturnal habits, sleeping during the day and flying at night in search of food. They live together in colonies and roost in trees and caves. Their food consists of insects and fruits.
Bats usually mate in the fall, and their young are born in spring. Females may have from one to four babies a year. Because there is no nest, infant bats must cling to their mothers for several weeks.
There are 850 to 900 species of bats worldwide, except in the Arctic Zone and certain remote oceanic islands. The most common kinds found in North America are brown bats, Mexican free-tailed bats, hoary bats and silver-haired bats.
