Bats are able to hunt at night by utilizing a process called echolocation. Though they do have poor eyesight, bats arent blind, however they dont use their eyes to catch their pray. In echolocation bats emit short sound pulses. When these pulses hit objects in the flight path of a bat, they shoot echoes back that provide information to bats about whats ahead.
Approximately 70% of bats eat insects. In general, bats catch their prey in the air or on the wing. Bats will often make dramatic swoops toward their prey and usually attempt to catch them in their wide mouths. Sometimes, bats will consume their prey mid-flight, but usually they will bring prey back to their roosting spot to eat it.
Bats can consume several hundred insects in an hour and will eat up to 1/3 of their body weight during one night. They consume a wide variety of insects such as: moths, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, ants, dragonflies, termites and others. Though bats primarily snatch their prey from mid-air, there are a few species who will consume insects off the ground.
Approximately 20% of bats are fruit eaters. Fruit-eating bats generally prefer sweet and fleshy fruits like: bananas, peaches, dates, mangoes and figs. Bats will extract fruits from the tree or bush where they grow and bring them back to their roosting site for consumption. Bats only eat part of the fruit, spitting the seeds out onto the ground. Because of this, bats help in the proliferation of many plant species.
Some bats also consume nectar from plants. These bats usually have long snouts that allow them extract nectar efficiently.
A few bat species consume vertebrates such as frogs, lizards and birds. There are also a handful of bat species who eat fish. These bats swoop down over lakes or rivers and use their claws and feet to snatch the fish away.
Only three bat species consume blood as the sole component of their diet. The white-winged vampire bat and the hairy-legged vampire bat consume the blood of birds, while the common vampire bat consumes the blood of mammals.
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What Do Bats Eat?
Given that there are nearly a thousand different species of bats, it is not surprising that they consume a wide variety of foods. They are also excellent hunters, able to detect even the smallest movements and faintest sounds. So what do bats eat?.
Bracken Cave is home to 20 million Mexican free-tail bats, which can consume about 200 tons of insects in a single night. Which would be like eating 200 Volkswagen Beetle cars.
Most bats eat insects and are called insectivores. These bats like to eat beetles, moths, mosquitoes, and more. And they sure do eat a lot of insects. One small brown bat can consume as many as 500 mosquito-sized insects in an hour, which is a lot of insects! Imagine how many more insects there might be without these insectivorous bats! Some bat colonies have millions of bats!
Certain bat species have a preference for eating fruit, seeds, and flower pollen. These bats are called frugivores. Their favorite foods are figs, mangoes, dates, and bananas. It has been observed that certain frugivores consume sugar water from hummingbird feeders.
What other foods do bats consume? Some species of bats have been known to consume fish, frogs, lizards, birds, and even other bats. There are even bats that drink blood. These are called vampire bats. The only three species of vampire bats are found in Central and South America. Don’t worry, either; vampire bats dislike consuming human blood. They mainly get blood from cows, sheep, and horses. Vampire bats slit a tiny hole in the skin of a sleeping animal and take a small amount of blood. Because vampire bats only require roughly two teaspoons of blood per day, the cow or sheep frequently doesn’t even wake up while the bat is feeding.
A trick question, you might think, since all of these are food for bats of some kind, is to identify which of these is not a bat food. There are even more foods that bats like to eat. Which bat foods are missing from the group?.
References:
Wilson, Don. 1997. Bats in Question. The Smithsonian Answer Book. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington. 168p.
Only three bat species consume blood as the sole component of their diet. The white-winged vampire bat and the hairy-legged vampire bat consume the blood of birds, while the common vampire bat consumes the blood of mammals.
Bats use a technique known as echolocation to hunt at night. Bats are not blind, despite having poor vision, but they do not use their eyes to catch their prey. In echolocation bats emit short sound pulses. These pulses cause echoes that inform bats about what’s ahead when they strike objects in their flight path.
When you’re ready to buy a bat house, take a look at our extensive online selection of bat houses. If you’d like to know more about bats, take a look at some of the articles below.
Certain bat species eat other vertebrates, including birds, lizards, and frogs. Additionally, a few species of bats consume fish. These bats use their feet and claws to grab the fish as they swoop down over rivers or lakes.
Approximately 20% of bats are fruit eaters. Fruit-eating bats typically have a preference for juicy, sweet fruits like figs, bananas, peaches, dates, and mangoes. When fruits ripen on a tree or bush, bats will gather them and carry them back to their roosting location to eat. Bats spit the seeds onto the ground after eating only a portion of the fruit. As a result, bats contribute to the growth of numerous plant species.
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