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Bat, Hanging
Handmade
Item # 46RM03
Size: 14.75"L x 4.75"W x 4"H
Price: $
This is a hand-crafted collection of realistic plush, sometimes lifesize animals. The "coat" of each animal is meticulously cut by hand, never stamped out by machine. Gentle paws, swishing tails, and especially soulful eyes and faces are lovingly detailed to give each animal a life-like look.
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Bats are flying mammals in the order Chiroptera. The forelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, glide rather than fly, and only for short distances. Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but instead flap their spread out digits, which are very long and covered with a thin membrane or patagium. Chiroptera comes from two Greek words, cheir "hand" and pteron "wing."
There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide, which represent about twenty percent of all classified mammal species. About seventy percent of bats are insectivores. Most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. A few species feed from animals other than insects. Bats are present throughout most of the world and perform vital ecological roles such as pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit seeds. Many tropical plants depend entirely on bats for the distribution of their seeds.
Bats range in size from Kitti's Hog-nosed Bat measuring 29–33 mm (1.14–1.30 in) in length and 2 g (0.07 oz) in mass, to the Giant Golden-crowned Flying-fox, which has a wing span of 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) and weighs approximately 1.2 kg (3 lb).
Although the eyes of most microbat species are small and poorly developed, leading to poor visual acuity, none of them are blind. Vision is used to navigate microbats especially for long distances when beyond the range of echolocation. It has even been discovered that some species are able to detect ultraviolet light. They also have a high quality sense of smell and hearing. Bats hunt at night to avoid competition with birds, and travel large distances at most 800 km, in their search for food.
The finger bones of bats are much more flexible than those of other mammals. One reason is that the cartilage in their fingers lacks calcium and other minerals nearer the tips, increasing their ability to bend without splintering. The cross-section of the finger bone is also flattened compared to the circular cross section that human finger bones have, and is very flexible. The skin on their wing membranes has more elasticity and so can stretch much more than other mammals.
The wings of bats are much thinner than those of birds, so bats can manoeuvre more quickly and more accurately than birds. It is also delicate, ripping easily. However the tissue of the bat's membrane is able to regrow, such that small tears can heal quickly. The surface of their wings is equipped with touch-sensitive receptors on small bumps called Merkel cells, found in most mammals including humans, similarly found on our finger tips. These sensitive areas are different in bats as each bump has a tiny hair in the center, making it even more sensitive and allowing the bat to detect and collect information about the air flowing over its wings, thereby providing feedback to the bat to change its shape of its wing to fly more efficiently. Some bats like the little brown bat can use this dexterious ability where it is able to drink in mid air. Other bats such as the flying fox or fruit bat gently skim the water's surface, then land nearby to lick water from their chest fur. An additional kind of receptor cell is found in the wing membrane of species that use their wings to catch prey. This receptor cell is sensitive to the stretching of the membrane. The cells are concentrated in areas of the membrane where insects hit the wings when the bats capture them.
The teeth of microbats resemble insectivorans. They are very sharp to bite through the hardened armor of insects or the skin of fruit.
Mammals have one-way valves in veins to prevent the blood from flowing backwards, but bats also have one-way valves in arteries.
One species of bat has the longest tongue of any mammal relative to its body size. This is beneficial to them in terms of pollination and feeding their long narrow tongues can reach deep into the long cup shape of some flowers. When their tongue retracts, it coils up inside their rib cage.
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