megabat-nerd

[megabat-nerd]

Here's your yearly reminder NOT to purchase bat taxidermy products.

Because of their size, bats are notoriously difficult to find deceased from natural causes, and by the time they are found, the bodies have often already decomposed beyond value.

As sad as it is, it's true — As holidays approach, I know many people with an interest in these critters have the potential to receive gifts that are very unethical for the creatures they care about. Bats are killed for the sole purpose of displays like this as a soulless cash grab. Already, there are dozens of bat species that are threatened or endangered. It is not fair to them to support an industry that is actively trying to extinguish their life for decoration.

You can read more about this crisis here and here.

Photo provided by Denley Photography on Unsplash.

Reblogs on this post are encouraged.

[megabat-nerd]

Drew some bats!!

[megabat-nerd]

Fijian Free-Tailed bat maternity roost, via

[megabat-nerd]

The Beaste is Contained

[megabat-nerd]

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

[megabat-nerd]

"kill them with kindness" wrong. bat attack

🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇

[megabat-nerd]

Bat shoutout time!

Shoutout to Honduran White Bats!! These little guys are usually only about an inch and a half long, and look like Stitch’s cousins!! They curl up in leaves to sleep instead of caves and they sleep in groups of two to fifteen! Look at these lil dudes!!!!!

I LOVE BATS

#god’s silliest creatures

[megabat-nerd]

Seeing with sound: Real life bats are more like superheroes than you may think—and they’ve evolved for over 50 million years to do so. Some examples: bats can be infected with deadly viruses and not get sick, have the longest lifespan of any other mammal relative to their body size, and bounce high-frequency sounds off objects and listen for their echoes to calculate the distance, size, and shape of objects. (Above, a bat in flight catches a moth.)

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK THIESSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

[megabat-nerd]

Lots of bats have a very good sense of smell and are very good at navigating, so this probably doesn’t happen often. For example, Brazilian free-tailed bat pups can find their mother among over 10 million other bats in the roost, just by their smell and voice, and vice versa. If this were to happen, the lost bat would probably just get a bit confused, then fly out and get back to its own colony! Bats are rarely aggressively territorial so it probably wouldn’t be any big deal. 🦇💖

Do bats accidentally end up in a different colony by mistake? Like do the other bats react or does the one that entered. Would it be like this?

[megabat-nerd]

the fact that some painted bats in Thailand naturally come in orange and black Halloween colors makes me so happy you dont understand

the ultimate spook bois 

[megabat-nerd]

So about these classifications bc I love them!! Until 2001, Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera were used as the suborders for Chiroptera. But DNA studies that year found the distinctions described here; some microbats, mainly those with complex echolocation structures, were more closely related to megabats. So Yangochiroptera and Yinpterochiroptera were coined to more accurately describe these. Mega/micro is still often used, as it’s very useful for description, but the scientific distinction is microbats as Yangochiroptera and Rhinolophoidea, and megabats as Pteropodidae. 🦇🦇

And now it’s time for…

Bat Facts™️ pt. 1!

Some experts don’t like to classify bats into megabats and microbats, so they instead use the terms Yinterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera. The former includes all megabats and some microbats, seeing as certain types of microbats are more similar to megabats than they are to other microbats. The term Yangochiroptera refers to all the remaining microbats!

#bats #I love CLASSIFICATION IT’S SO FUN AND WEIRD

[megabat-nerd]

Okay so!!! Fun facts about bat pollination :3

Tube-lipped nectar bats have the longest tongue in relation to body length of any mammal, at 1.5x the body length! They use this to drink nectar and often pollinate flowers in the process

Flowers pollinated by bats are often adapted to be detected by bats. They’ll be light coloured, open at night, and there’s even a type of plant with leaves shaped to reflect echolocation calls. Other plants are shaped to place the anthers (part with the pollen) over or on bats while they feed

The plants used in tequila are naturally pollinated by bats! However, due to how they’re farmed, this has actually removed a food source for the bats. If you buy tequila, some brands have a ‘bat safe’ sticker on them, so look for that!

Bats which feed on nectar with their tongues often have really interesting adaptations for it. The orange nectar bat has muscular grooves in its tongue which move to pump nectar into it’s mouth, and other species have brush-tipped tongues

Because pollen is a powder, pollination can be a very messy job, resulting in these adorable photos:

(Pallid bat [left] and Cuban flower bat [right])

You don't realize how much I despise the school system for not even caring to tell me that bats are pollinators. I only found this out, like, this year

I thought they were just cool little dudes who flied around

#bats #they’re so silly honestly #love me a good phyllostomid #or possibly even a pteropodid

[megabat-nerd]

Bats, despite often being considered flying rodents, ara closer related to ungulates and whales than to rodents or humans (superorder Laurasiatheria).

some other taxonomic facts for you to get mad at evolution for, instead of "birds are dinosaurs"

"Insects are Crustaceans" (Pancrustacea)

"Dolphins are Hoofed Mammals" (Artiodactyl)

"Mushrooms are closer to Animals than they are to Plants" (Opisthokont)

"Hyenas are Cat-like" (Feliformia)

"Herpetology is a LYING BASTARD since Amphibians are equally close to Mammals and Reptiles, and there's no reason it should be included like that. if anything, Herpetology should be a parent science of Ornithology, since birds are reptiles. why the fuck are toads here??" (Amniota, Sauria)

"really, we're all just fish" (Sarcopterygii)

[megabat-nerd]

THE FINAL MATCH OF BAT TOURNAMENT 2023

Our first finalist! The Pallid bat! Did you know these guys can eat scorpions? Their diet actually consists of ground dwelling insects! They deliver more pollen than other polinators, too! They also have stunning smiles, as you can see.

Then the Honduran White Bat! These little guys live in leaves they've chewed on to form a sort of shelter! And yes, almost every picture of them has these sillies all cuddled together. They eat figs and other fruit, and are sadly a near threatened species. They inspired the Pokemon Woobat, as well!

#VOTE PALLID BAT!!! #my venom resistant huge smile listening babies

[megabat-nerd]

Top, left > right: Wrinkle faced bat, horseshoe bat (unsure ab species), Molossid (unsure species)

Middle: Common vampire bat, black flying fox (could be a different Pteropus)

Bottom: Honduran white bat, Myotis species, some kind of Phyllostomid

hey can someone help me id these bats i wanted to look them up but I don't know what they're called but i wanna see more of these beasts

[megabat-nerd]

bats

[megabat-nerd]

Welcome to the Weird Animal Tournament!!

Submissions open!!

Seeing all the Tumblr tournaments made me want to make my own, for one of my favourite topics, nature’s freaks!! This is intended to celebrate natural diversity and the huge variety in the animal kingdom - the weirder the better!!

Submission details

Animals must be real - no cryptids!

Prehistoric animals are allowed, so long as they have widely agreed upon features or appearance

Don’t skew submissions by submitting the same thing multiple times

“Weird” has many meanings here. They can be very evolutionarily distinct from other animals, just look weird, have very unique behaviours, or just have Freak Vibes™️!

All genres of animals are allowed, so long as they are definitely animals! Ur microscopic babies count :)

Please try to be specific with submission names, since some common names are quite vague. Scientific names will be super helpful in those cases!

Since I don’t know how many submissions I’ll get, I haven’t decided how big the bracket will be. I’m just going to take submissions until they generally stop coming in, or until the amount is the limit of what I could deal with easily.

Submit a creature here!

Blogs who I think might be interested (sorry for being annoying sob):

@one-weird-mammal-a-day @flittermousing @bat-diagnosis @onenicebugperday

#yes!!! #weird animals woohoo!!