What Do Bats Eat?
Many people have the perception that bats only drink blood for their diet. While there are a few species of bats that do actually drink blood, it is usually the blood from other animals.
The majority of bars eat insects, such as moths, beetles, gnats, and crickets. In this respect, the bat’s nocturnal behavior provides certain advantages. If you step out of your house at night, you will notice that the number of insects increases than during the day. This is important to bats, as they dine on this wonderful palate of insects.
One bat can consume thousands of mosquitoes in a single night. Think of how many fewer mosquitoes you will have in your backyard if you had a few bats helping to control them.
There have been studies done on what bats prefer to eat. For example, some bats that live in cave prefer a diet of beetles, leafhoppers, flies, and moths. It has been found that small insects usually will be caught directly in their mouth, but larger insects are actually caught in the wing membrane and then moved into a basket formed by the hind legs and the interfemoral membrane. Later the insect is pulled out and eaten.
Not all bats capture their food in flight. Some bats will catch grasshoppers or roaches directly from the ground or on rocks. This is a benefit to the bat because it requires less energy to capture one large insect versus hundreds of small insects such as tiny moths or gnats.
Bats can also use their feet to snatch insects from the surface of lakes or ponds. The majority of bats in the United States are insectivorous, or insect eaters.
There are three species that came from Mexico that eat pollen and nectar. In some cases, they will eat the petals from flowers. For a bat, pollen is highly nutritious. One of the cool things about the flower-eater bats is that they are usually smaller in size, have a long pointed headed, and long tongues. They have the ability to hover and fly slowly over the flowers. If fruit trees are around, they will use fruit to supplement their diet. Guess they like a fruit desert.
Bats are a cool mammal to learn about. Explore this website for more cool facts.
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