A baby bat is born blind, naked and helpless. The only thing that he can do is suck milk and cling his claws to his mother’s fur. The first days she carries it on herself, like a monkey. By the way, genetically bats are much closer to primates than to rodents. The five-day-old mouse can already remain alone, while the mother procures food. Large colonies of animals have developed a system of collective feeding – each female feeds her, and at times even a neighbor’s cub. Since the insects are very nutritious, the mother has enough milk. Mice grow quickly and go to an independent life by a month and a half. Bats live from 10 to 20 years, depending on the species.
Bats of the temperate belt eat insects. They hunt mainly in flight, while the membranes act like a net, raking up those living creatures that did not fall into a wide open mouth. One mouse, bursting into a flock of gnats, catches 15 midges a minute. Over an hour in her womb disappears more than 600 mosquitoes, and lasts hunting all night long. It is worth imagining – and immediately the desire to offend a useful animal is lost.
In the Far East, where terrestrial invertebrates are abundant, the mice switched to the method of hunting “in a plastic way”. They creep crawly on the ground and collect everything that will fall: beetles, caterpillars, spiders and centipedes, even small frogs.
Tropical bats are very diverse in appearance, different in their diet. As a rule, small animal animals eat invertebrates, and large animals prefer vegetable or mixed food. In the menu of false vampires, there are fruits and insects, and in case of an opportunity they drink the blood of large animals. There are sweet mice that prefer nectar of night flowers. The animal hangs over the plant like a hummingbird, and a long tongue takes out a delicacy. Insects who spend the night in a cup of a flower, a mouse, too, will eat with pleasure. In the photo below, a bat drinks juice from a test tube. If you leave any sweet drink open, the mice will wake up at night in the house and will suck it out.
