Vampire bats are not only masters of flight, but also skillful walkers
Joel Sartor/Photo Arc/naturepl.com
Something begins to stir in the undergrowth of a New Zealand forest. Small furry animals run around on tree roots and in fallen leaves, looking for insects and fruit. He runs with a strange gait, as if he were on stilts. Is it a rat? bird? No, it’s a bat. The New Zealand brown bat, or more precisely, the Pekapeka toupoto.
Bats first took to the skies about 52 million years ago and have remained there ever since. There are approximately 1,300 species in the world, but not one of them is flightless. Most bats can’t even walk well. That’s why many of us are surprised by the behavior of Pekapekatupoto, a bat that is comfortable both in the air and on the ground.
However, why flightless bats do not exist is an evolutionary mystery. Birds, another great group of flying vertebrates, have evolved into flightless animals many times around the world. They frequent remote islands such as New Zealand, where there is little danger from ground-based predation (at least until humans show up, anyone else grilling dodos?). In such situations, flightlessness is a good adaptation because flight is energetically costly.
The world’s most land-dwelling bat, the pekapekatoupoto, has long been thought to hold the key to explaining the strange absence of flightless bats. But research over the past two decades has revealed the surprising fact that many other species of bats can walk, too. Inside…
Source: www.newscientist.com
