Researchers shed new light on flying fox — world’s least-studied bat

According to an October 29 news release from Pensoft Publishers, a specimen of Mortlock Islands flying fox that has remained preserved in a jar of alcohol in The Natural History Museum in London, England, for more than 140 years received renewed interest – and a new name – by a team of bat biologists from the College of Micronesia.  Led by Dr. Don Buden, the team collected new data on the bat and studied it in its natural habitat for the first time.

 The results of the study appear today in the open access journal ZooKeys, an imprint of Pensoft Publishers, in an article entitled, “Taxonomy, distribution, and natural history of flying foxes (Chiroptera, Pteropodidae) in the Mortlock Islands and Chuuk State, Caroline Islands.”

Source: Here

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Deadly fungus found in Minnesota bat caves

A fungus that spreads a disease that’s nearly always fatal to bats has been found in two of Minnesota’s largest bat caves — the Soudan Underground Mine near Lake Vermilion and a cave at Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park in southern Minnesota.

The two Minnesota sites are considered among the state’s largest bat hibernacula — or wintering sites — and thousands of bats live in both.

Source: Here

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bat, bat caves, bats,

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X-Ray Video Reveals How Bats Power Flight

Novel X-ray video of fruit bats mid-flight reveals a remarkably detailed look at the muscular and skeletal structure required for the mammals to take flight..

Using XROMM (X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology) technology, a team of scientists led by Brown University's Nicolai Konow was able to better understand how bats manage to be the only mammal capable of sustained flight by capturing three-dimensional images of bone structure and movement patterns.

Source: Here

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bat, bats, Bats Power Flight,

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