Page 25 - Vampire Bat News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Reversed. they are using their wings as a built-in blanket. >> he has been part of a larger movement taking place, teaching people why the creatures should be protected and not feared. >> we are all here for one purpose and target and direction. that is to help the animals and to help people understand why the animals need our assistance. they are so much like us. they are different looking and colors and sizes and shapes, different importances and jobs they do. i keep going back to that is what i think at the end of the day makes me love them so much. they are like people. when life gets back...

Morning. >> we do everything we can to ensure the safety and well being of the animals and we have a basic set of samples we correct. oral swabs, fecal pellets, blood. and we take measurements. >> over the course of eight months, they sampled caves all over southern china and then took them back to the lab. >> it really took better part of eight years of consistent and persistent sampling, testing different horseshoe bat populations around, until we finally found the missing link we were looking for. >> that link was a bat virus genetically connected to sars. capable of jumping directly from b...

>> the smallest bat in the world, it is this tiny thing in thailand that weighs less than a penny. the biggest bat in the world has more than a six-foot wing span. there is a bat that lives in the cloud forests of ecuador that has the longest tongue of any mammal. this thing has a tongue that is 1 1/2 times the length of its body. if you stick your arm straight out in front of and you imagine your tongue could touch your fingers, it is three times that long so it can get into a flower to pollinate. >> so relative to its body size, if i stick my arm out, if my tongue could be to the end of my a...

But in the southeastern parts of the united states, in particular, texas, there's an abundance of one species. the mexican free tail bat. that bracken cave outside san antonio is believed to be home to the single largest colony of bats in the world. >> every year during the spring and summer, i think there are something like 30 million bats in the cave. >> in the cave? >> in the cave. in the summer. there are so many bats that the local weather stations use their doppler radar. they can see the cloud of bats coming out and spreading over the landscape to catch insects. >> really? >> it takes h...

Then they make a little divot with their front teeth, and they put their jaw up against that hole and they lick and drink and pee. it is completely creepy. who else does that? >> i'll tell you who else. a serial killer does that. however, vampire bats don't kill their victims. they just act like a mammal sized parasite. i've heard you say that the weirdness of bats was scientifically interesting to you. >> the faces of bats is a perfect example of that. if you take a bat that has a weird flap on its nose, you think that's a strange looking adornment, it turns out a lot of bats have food in the...