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E-Mail IMAGE: The European bulldog bat not only hunts for insects near the ground, but sometimes also climbs to high altitudes. view more Credit: Adria Baucells Bats are the only mammals that can actively fly. Some species travel over one hundred kilometres on their nocturnal excursions in search of food. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell have now discovered that European free-tailed bats use uplifting winds for their ascents - a behaviour that was previously known only from birds. To do this, they tracked the bats using mini GPS loggers and then linked the flight data to weather data. The animals can thus gain altitude of well over 1,000 metres without expending much energy. The results also show that the bats reach flight speeds of up to 135 kilometres per hour. ....
Credit: Teague O Mara Although scientists knew that some bats could reach heights of over 1,600 meters (or approximately one mile) above the ground during flight, they didn t understand how they managed to do it without the benefit of thermals that aren t typically available to them during their nighttime forays. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on February 4th have uncovered the bats secret to high-flying. It turns out that the European free-tailed bats they studied powerful fliers that the researchers documented sometimes reaching speeds of up to 135 kilometers (84 miles) per hour in self-powered flight do depend on orographic uplift that happens when air is pushed up over rising terrain to help them fly high, just as birds do during the day. But, because that s harder to find during the cooler night, they have to rely on just the right sort of areas to reach those high altitudes. ....