[Fruit bat. Picture Source]
Bats: The Facts And The Myths
There are many myths revolving around bats. One of them is a false belief that they are blind.
Most of bats are nocturnal creatures and many use echolocation to track their prey, but that does not mean that they are blind. In reality, none of the known bats are blind. With an exception of microbats that have poor eyesight, many bats have vision as good as rats. Species of megabats (or fruit bats) have sight as good as humans, if not better.
Even the microbats have vision good enough to fly long distances beyond the reach of echolocation and have great night vision. Echolocation can only be used to track moving objects (such as insects) so microbats use their sight to avoid obstacles, for altitude measurement and for landmark recognition.
The fruit bats, for example, do not use echolocation but completely rely on their well developed eyesight. Bats also have very well developed senses of smell and hearing.
[Fruit bat. Picture Source]
The "blindness" myth is quite harmless in comparison to other myths that have given them a bad reputation such as one about bats sucking up animal or human blood. Majority of bats only consume insects (about 70%), while majority of the remaining species feed on fruits. Only three species called vampire bats feed on animal blood and have been reported to bite people. They never do suck up blood but use similar feeding method to the mosquito. They make a tiny bite, lick off few drops of blood while using their saliva's anti-clotting enzyme to keep the blood flowing.
[Vampire bat. Picture Source]
The studies on bats have proven that they are an important part of tropical forest ecosystems, as well as many ecosystems in Europe, Asia or Africa. They are responsible for pollination and seed dispersal of hundreds of species of plants and flowers, that entirely depend on them. Because of their insect pest hunting skills, they can contribute to the decrease in usage of pesticides. Some people even build bat houses (or bat boxes) in their gardens or close to the crops to use these animals as a natural way of fighting insect pests.
[Bat house. Picture Source]
References:
"6 Bat Myths Busted: Are They Really Blind?", National Geographic, 2014.
"Myths and Facts", Organization For Bat Conservation.
"Are Bats Really Blind?", Live Science, 2016.
-logic
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I admit, I had fallen for that myth that bats are either blind or have a bad eyesight. Nice post! :)
Thanks. Your posts are way better than mine!
Oh! I'm flattered my dear sir! Thank you! :)
i wonder how many bt d you use to get upvotes for ur lol ahahah. so you think really this post deserve 87 SBD...???? I think steemit developpers have to have look about their rules on using bots and the reawrds of unvlable posts like yours. 70 SBD rewards of this posts comes from bots?? what a help is happening on steemit.
Half of the reward comes from various boosters that I paid for.
Actually, was not that good deal considering thaht I spent about 30SBD on them and got back about 35-40SBD worth of curation.
"non" of the known bats are blind - should be "none" :-)
got it
hola hermano! como estad? long time no read !
am sure glad to see you posting this time :D
ik
ik ~~ iksorry ,, that's the sound I make when I turn into a vampire bat .. is it full moon tonight ?hahaha just kidding.. howdy?
I'm all good. Nice to see you.
Isn't that full moon thing affecting werewolves though? :-)
wahahahah I suck at horror stuff hahah
I'm surprised people keep bat houses but it makes sense.
There was a guy that lived close to where I grew up that I guess got a disease from bats being in the barn. After hearing that I have always been worried about being in a cave.
Just don't touch the guano! lol
Or breath it in!
Oddly enough the Guano Apes are one of my favorite bands!
I like that band too. My fav song is Lord of the Boards :-)
Yeah Lord of the Boards is great to! They have about 5 songs I really like!
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Nice, you got a 56.0% @minnowbooster upgoat, thanks to @claudia
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liar and rubbish
I see that you have multiple accounts. Good to know. I will keep the watch on this one too.
CITING IMAGES THAT ARE CLEARLY COPYRIGHTED DOES NOT EXCUSE BLATANT PLAGIARISM. THIS PAYOUT NEEDS TO BE REMOVED. THANK YOU
interesting post
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This comment spam was a bad idea lol :-)
Speaking about bats and comment spam, that reminds me of our conversation in the vampire blood bar in Lisbon with @scan0017 and @bettyboob.. I think you'll be up soon for a photoshop hommage post :)
Lol, it was nice to meet you :-)