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Walking Bats Older Than Assumed

  • 08-08-2009 12:51PM
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭


    There is a species of bat living in New Zealand that chooses walking over flying. This trait was always taught to have been a recent adaptation. However the discovery of a 20 million year old relative shows that this kind of behaviour is much older.
    Walking on the ground gives the bats access to food souces that would be impractical to snatch on the wing.
    the discovery of fossils of a now extinct walking bat in northwestern Queensland, Australia, suggests that the modern-day bats descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives.

    "We were amazed to find they were virtually identical to the bats in New Zealand today," said study leader Sue Hand, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney

    Full article here.

    090807-walking-bat_big.jpg
    Photo by Mike Thorsen


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