Bats fly by grabbing the air in their their sensitive webbed fingers, feeling little eddies of air, they adjust instantaneously deftly, teasing their way through air currents.
I'm certain birds have a similar sense of the air, but there is something more relatable and easier to imagine about being the bat, using great webbed hands to surf & climb air columns.
We haven't even gotten to the part about the radar yet!
If I could spend a day as a creature it'd be an ant, but 2nd choice is a bat.
@futurebird to be a bat, catching the boost of warm air currents into the air and cool breezes, chirping with joy calling out and catching the tasty little protein morsels in the air. And sweet beautiful nectar flowers and succulent tasty fruits. What a life I would have!
When I dream tonight, definitely going to have some bat time!
@futurebird We had a guy come and talk about bats to our local conservation commission group. I did not realize (despite a childhood loving bats and being really interested in them) is that they can glide and soar and fly once they're in the air but they can't like... leap into the air and start flying. So if you see a bat on the ground, it might be that it's just grounded and not necessarily got something else wrong with it. They have to climb up a tree and jump off to be able to get airborne.
True, though some caution with bats is wise since, due to their ability to hibernate at low temperatures, they have all kinds of ... pathogens... and in loads that ought to make them sick but don't.
We use heat to keep many things that make us sick at bay... they don't ... one can catch so many things from bats.
And really we should understand that better, it's a superpower in a way.
But don't pick up bats... without gloves ... and more.
@futurebird@jessamyn Yep. My sister told me exactly the same thing when I found a bat on the ground nearby me. I grew up in an old farmhouse and we had a silo in the back that had a back colony that was found to be rabid when I was in high school. It was an ugly scene for a while but I'm happy to report that the bat colony has totally rebounded and appears to be happily living in the silo again.
@futurebird@jessamyn Yeah, it made us all really happy. There's a longer story involving my mother fighting with the state health department when they assured her that bats did not carry rabies. This was in the 70s and they probably didn't know better. I believe my mother may have mailed them a frozen bat.
@jessamyn@futurebird
there are some exceptions to this rule: the vampire bats of central America, and the ground-foraging bats of New Zealand. I suspect there are others.
@jessamyn@futurebird (These exceptions were historically important in the study of pterosaurs; they inspired the modern theory that pterosaurs were quadrupedal when on the ground, and the modern "quad-lanch" theory of how pterosaurs launched themselves into the air. If you hear pterosaur scientists say "pterosaurs take off like bats", it's these few exceptional bats they're referring to, not the far more common bats that climb a tree or a cliff to take off.)
@jessamyn We had a big brown bat colony in our attic. They’d often find their way into our home. We learned the easiest way to catch and release them was to knock them to the ground with a towel, scoop them up and take them out to our big maple tree. We stopped counting at 200. 😣 Husband was bitten and had to go through painful preventative rabies shots. Finally got them out after 6 months of finding them constantly. Later we learned that’s why our house was sold (to us).
@futurebird
I am now bothered by this weirdly vague memory of reading that birds have repurposed the nerves and muscles formerly used for their fingers to be used for the feathers of their wings, but I'm not at all sure that's correct.
(what I am sure of: Most of the finger and hand bones of a bird are all fused together, except for those needed for the ulula (thumb) and its claw, and the ulua and its feathers are used for braking, but also used for changing the camber of the wing)
@futurebird Well, I'm close to your wish. My first choice if I could spend a day as an animal (retaining my current brain) but adding the abilities of the animal, somehow, magically, without any practice, would be a domestic cat. The reasons should be obvious. Second choice has long been a bat. Not because I want to eat mosquitos but because I want to experience how it is to echolocate a mosquito while on the wing. That has to be amazing.
I love bats. When I lived in Guatemala, I'd frequently walk down to my private pier on the Rio Dulce river and stand at the end of the pier to serve as bait. Mosquitos love me and would swarm over me head. The bats took full advantage, swooping over my head so low they'd touch as they went by. Totally cool experience. While doing that I'd watch the "fishing bats". I don't know what species but they are very large (18 inches across?) and would skim over the surface of the water at high speed, occasionally snatching up an unwary fish.
I was told they use echolocation to examine the surface of the water and detect distortions caused by the passage of fish near the surface, thereby locating the fish. Yeesh. Speaking as an engineer, this certainly seems possible but an very impressive feat.
But more to the point I think the nature of air, and falling is very different at ant-scale... and you can walk up walls and ceilings... It's a whole different physical reality. Not to mention to know what it would be like to be part of a colony.
I love Cepholates so much. They are the strangest looking little flat tanks of ants. There are some that live in the south in the US and in TX and south CA.