Fisica

* Bats are very clean animals, and groom themselves almost constantly (when not eating or sleeping) to keep their fur soft and clean, like tiny cats.
* The pallid bat of western North America istotally immune to the stings of the scorpions and centipedes upon which it feeds.
* A nursing little brown bat mother can eat more than her body weight nightly (up to 4,500 insects).
* Ananticoagulant derived from vampire bat saliva is now used to treat human heart patients and stroke victims.
* Little brown bats can reduce their heart rate to 20 beats per minute and can stopbreathing altogether for 48 minutes at a time while hibernating. They may hibernate for more than seven months if left undisturbed, but can starve if they are awakened too many times during the winter, whichcauses them to run out of energy reserves before spring.
* African heart-nosed bats can hear the footsteps of a beetle walking on sand from a distance of more than six feet.
* A small colonyof bats can eat over one ton of insects in one year, or more than 600 million bugs.
* The world’s largest bat is the giant golden-crowned flying fox, a rare fruit bat. It has a wingspan of 5 to 6feet
* Here are over 1,100 bat species in the world—only rodents have a greater number of species. In the United States, there are about 45 kinds of bats; the three most common are the Eptiesicusfuscus (big brown bat), Myotis lucifugus (little brown bat), and Tadarida brasilienis (Mexican free-tailed bat).
* Bats don't have "fat days." The metabolism of a bat is enviable -- they can digestbananas, mangoes, and berries in about 20 minutes.
* In West Africa, small woolly bats live in large spider webs
* Bats are the slowest reproducing mammals in the world for their size, andpregnancy is longer in bats than in other animals of their size.
* Batwings are actually flaps of skin

Bats are amazing little creatures. There's so much to learn about them and lots of...