Bats millions of years ago

Earlier we wondered if bats were close to birds. They also look like mice and can be held in palms. So many people call them “Flying Mouse”.

So who are they close to : birds , monkeys , mice or us.

Truth is they are much more closer to monkeys and us than to mice or birds.

Do you know how they used to look and live millions of years ago?

We think that they used to live on trees a hundred million years ( 100,000,000 yrs !) ago.

Like a squirrel or a monkey, they would leap from one branch to another. Some among them were born with some skin between their arms and body. This gave them a bit more lift than others. They could also remain in air for a longer time with the help of this and jump to branches much farther from them. They were able to jump and save themselves from those animals which attacked them. As they were more able to find food and save their lives, they had more and more babies. These babies also had similar skins between their body and arms. The larger the skin grew, the more lift they could get from it and longer time they could spend in air. As their babies had more babies and so on, after millions of years, this piece of skin slowly changed to a wing, all this while helping them find food more and more efficiently.

Their senses are so wonderfully suited to find food for them in their environment that they have survived as a group for more than 50 million years, longer than most other modern animals.

Like human beings, bats also help fellow bats! In some cases, when a bat is ill and cannot hunt for its own food, other bats from the colony go out and bring food back to it!

We started the story of bats by promising to tell you about one interesting thing it does : Echo – location.

You will be surprised to know that they are not the only animals who find food in this way.

Many kinds of fish and mammals who live in the seas use it.