Cool Facts- This large species of bat may have the cutest nose in the animal kingdom. Females tend to be a little larger than the males and all yellow-winged bats sport the yellow-white color scheme. Yellow-winged bats mate for life and control a small territory. The pairs will sleep together in trees where the male is fiercely protective of the female. Females tend to give birth in April during the start of the rainy season. Each mother has only one baby who will cling to their mother’s chest while she flies. These babies are capable of flight after only a week and leave their parents after about three months. The bat’s huge ears help them locate prey and their surroundings. Considered a false vampire bat, the yellow-winged bat eats only insects despite its appearance.
This is the largest bat in continental Africa, with wingspans approaching 1 m, or about 3 ft, and males almost twice as heavy as females.
Males and females also greatly differ in appearance, making it the most sexually dimorphic bat species in the world. This differences include several adaptations that help males produce and amplify vocalizations: the males’ larynges (vocal cords) are about three times as large as those of females, and they have large resonating chambers on their faces. Females appear more like a typical megabat, with foxlike faces.
Males have massive resonating chambers on their faces to amplify vocalizations (indicated by dashed line)
Convergent evolution is wild, bc like, crabs keep evolving to look the same but aren’t closely related, nature is just like: BIG MEATY CLAWS, little legs, pincers, head, tiny eyes, let’s do it again!
and trees look the same but oak trees are more closely related to rose bushes than they are pine trees, fucked up
nature just likes these damns shapes:
but on the other hand, mammals flying with powered flight?? That shit only happened ONCE and it had to do some janky shit to get there, especially with bat immune systems
likebat’s immune systems are HYPER-POWERED as well as repress most of their inflammatory reactions because in order to fly they needed a bonkers-high metabolic rate which unfortunately also create waste products from the process called “free radicals” that damage cells
however, despite these free radicals they manage to live up to FORTY YEARS, which is super long for a species their size, because their immune system are basically always ON and in an anti-viral state that make them incubators for disease due to warfare between their jacked immune systems and disease
bats are so gdamn weird, I love them, no other mammal has been able to copy off their homework and accomplish the same shape, and for that they are the anti-crab of the natural world, God bless
It really worked out for them too, like it’s a hell of a lane and they have it all to themselves, so they’ve really filled their niche. There are more bats than almost any other kind of mammal. Like, there are a higher number of individual bats, but also the most KINDS of bat.
For example there are about 30 million white-tailed deer alive in the world, whereas there are 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats living in ONE single colony in Texas. But also, there are about 43 species of deer on the whole planet, 38 species of feline, 34 species of canine… and about 1,300 species of bat.
It is estimated that one out of every five living mammals on Earth is a bat, or, to put it another way, if you took every single mammal on the planet and counted them as individuals, 20% of those animals would be some kind of bat.
It’s kind of obvious if you think about it that “tree” isn’t a real type of plant, but damn it sure is a Realization.
I see this and raise you: “Worm” is not a real type of animal. There are like, 12 phyla that are Just Worms but “worm” doesn’t even mean anything
