"Unlike most bats, which largely avoid the ground, vampire bats are capable runners, using their folded wings to propel them forward. This helps them stealthily stalk livestock — and occasionally unsuspecting humans.“They don’t want to flutter down and drop right on the back of a cow,” said Kenneth Welch, a biologist at the University of Toronto Scarborough, who studies vampire bats and other animals with specialized diets. “Instead, they land a few feet away, silently approach the cow’s leg and make a tiny, painless incision with the cow none the wiser.”...But once the vampire bats took to the treadmill, they flexed their fitness. As the team steadily increased the speed of the treadmill, the bats first walked, then trotted and eventually bounded along as the belt moved at nearly 100 feet per minute. Most of the bats kept moving for the entire 90-minute test period.
The source article at the New York Times focuses on the metabolism of these bats.
Google says Vampire bats are 2.8 to 3.5 inches long (head & body) with a 7 to 8 inch wingspan.
ReplyDelete100 ft/min is 1.14 mph and pretty fast for such a tiny critter.
Doing 90 minutes on a treadmill is out of my league.
xoxoxoBruce
Bats are kinda cute. Bats running on treadmills are a bit creepy. M. Night Shyamalan could scare the crap out of us with this fuel.
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