The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

Now this creature is no longer like the flying squirrels or the colugo, which can only take floating leaps; for though like them it has only a membrane stretching out from its body, yet this has become a long flexible wing, formed on a widely outstretched arm and abnormally long hand, and moved by powerful muscles like the wings of birds or insects. It is essentially fitted for flitting through the air in search of prey, while it makes but little use of the running power which it possesses in common with all other insect-eaters. If you see a bat moving along the ground, you will acknowledge at once that it is a true quadruped, yet, by its awkward gait as it shuffles along on its clawed thumb and toes, you will judge that it is not an earth-loving animal. Watch it at night on the wing and it is quite another creature; then it will flit about in and out of cracks and crevices, under the eaves, round the haystacks, or among the trees, and never once strike its wings against anything, though it has been proved that it does not trust chiefly to its bead-like eyes to guide it.

Bats have been blinded, their ears stopped with wool, and their noses with sponge dipped in camphor; and yet, without sight, hearing, or smell, they steered quite successfully between outstretched threads or tree-branches, or found their way into a hole in the roof. In truth, as they have become fitted to navigate the air, they seem also to have become sensitive to its currents. Their wings are abundantly supplied with nerves and blood-vessels, and have little rough points all over the surface; their ears have generally a second ear-lobe or leaf within the outer one, and those which have not this have leaves of skin or membrane round their nose. With all these they seem to feel the slightest difference in the air, so as to detect at once whether they are in the open, or whether any resisting object is near them.

Fig. 62.

A Bat walking.

Now it is clear that a creature of this kind, able to chase insects in the air, even in the darkest night, can secure much food that the running insect-eaters can never reach. When the little common English bat, the Pipistrelle, awakes from his day’s sleep, which he has been taking, head downwards, hanging by his feet in some old tree or under the roof of a barn, he finds the gnats and flies abroad, and begins his chase in the twilight—up and down, from side to side he flits, and his wide-open mouth takes in insects at every turn. And by-and-by, as the dark nights come on, the Long-eared Bats begin gradually to stir from their clusters in the barns and old buildings, and, unfolding their wings so as to display their ears as long as their bodies, commit sad havoc among the night-moths. All night long their shrill squeak may be heard, but before day dawns they are away again, and may be found hanging in dense masses by their hind legs to the timbers of some old church belfry, or in caves, or even under the roofs of houses, where they find an entrance by some hole, and go in by hundreds to hang from the rafters.

Many accounts are given in American writers of the thousands of bats collected in the caverns which abound in the Western States, while in the Egyptian catacombs they hang in myriads. For of all things a bat dreads the light when beasts of prey are abroad, and next to that he fears any position near the ground where weasels, wild cats, or other flesh-eating animals may seize him in his sleep. Nay, the smaller bats live in constant fear of the larger ones, for they feed upon one another with evident relish.

Yet in spite of dangers the bat family, aided by its power of flight, has spread all over the world, from the Arctic Circle to the Equator, east, west, north, and south. In cold countries they hang by their feet in the winter, or sometimes by their clawed thumbs, and sleep in dark recesses, scarcely breathing till the warm weather and the insects return; but in warm countries they are active all the year, sleeping by day and feeding by night.

In England and North America they are content chiefly with insect food, but in South America the Vampires, among the leaf-nosed bats, fasten on to large animals and suck their blood. Mr. Darwin had his servant’s horse bitten and disabled for two days by a vampire in Chili; while Mr. Wallace, when on the Amazon River, was himself twice bitten, once upon the great toe, and once on the tip of his nose while asleep! A bat is a grotesque-looking animal at best; but some of these leaf-nosed bats are simply hideous, with their wide-open mouth, sharp teeth, and the skinny leaves sticking up round their nose.

How different are the gentle-looking fruit-eating bats of the Tropics, which seem to belong to quite a different branch of the family. Their fox-like and intelligent faces are a pleasure to look at, reminding one of the lemurs, and harmonising beautifully with their quiet peaceful life among the fig-trees, guavas, mango-trees, and plantains of the East. There they hang in dense masses from the tall silk-cotton trees till night comes on, and then take wing as soon as the sun is set, and hooking themselves by one thumb to the fruit-trees, hold the fruit in the other as they feed.