Peculiar Things About Bats

By Jon of Bank Street School For Children, NYC.

All bats, creatures of the night, are peculiar in ways that I will explain in this article.

The vampire bat is unique from the others because it drink the blood of their prey, which are mainly small mammals and birds. They suck lap up the blood with their tongue. Vampire bats excrete a substance in their saliva which prevents the blood from clotting so they can drink more easily.

Another peculiar thing about bats is that they use a radar system called echolocation to navigate and hunt prey at night. The system works like this: the bat makes a loud screech and if the screech bounces off something and comes back to the bat, this shows that there is a obstacle in their way. If the sound does not come back, the bat is clear to fly.

One more interesting thing about bats is that they all live together in huge colonies. For example, as many as 40 million bats have been known to share a cave.

Return To: School For Children Environmental Science

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