Bats are mammals, and in fact, they are the only mammal that can fly. Here in North America, they are the most endangered mammal. They are endangered mostly because of habitat destruction (our development often encroaches on their natural homes) and pollution. If the bat population drops too low, the insect population will increase, which means more dangerous bugs like mosquitoes. A bat can eat one bug every six second, or 600 bugs in one hour!
Bats that eat bugs use a way of finding bugs at night called "echolocation". Because they have limited eyesight in the darkness of night, they emit sonar (sound waves) that bounces off other objects, allowing the bats to determine how close or far away they are to their prey (as well as information about the size and shape of the prey). It is a common myth that all bats are blind--they do, in fact, have remarkably good eyesight and can see better in the dark than we can.
Not all bats eat bugs. Some bats eat fruit, and fruit-eating bats spread seeds and pollen, helping plant populations to grow. When a fruit bat eats fruit, the seeds pass through it, and come out in guano (bat refuse). The guano falls to the ground when the bat flies around, and the seeds sprout. One fruit bat can spread 60,000 seeds per night! Other bats fly from flower to flower, spreading pollen like a bee or hummingbird.
The scientific name for a bat is "chiroptera" which means "hand wing". This is because the bat's wing is like a giant hand! If you examine a bat's wing closely, you can see the bones that make up the hand, forming the structure of the wing. The bat's "hand wing" has four fingers and a thumb, just like our human hands.
Bats can be very large, or very small. The smallest bat weighs less than a penny, whereas the largest bat has a wing span of 6 feet. Even the biggest bats are pretty harmless--they live off nectar and fruits.
There are only three species of bats--out of almost 1000 species--that could be considered dangerous. They fall under the category of "vampire bats" because they drink very small amounts of blood from other mammals. They mostly drink from cows or horses, and live in Central and South America.
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