Quarantine entry #14 - April 4

…It came to pass to my knowledge that I’ve talked about the alligators – especially the American alligator – a lot in the past entries; much more so than about the bears, so yeah, my apology, if yesterday’s material was something of a re-use, but while we’re down in the lockdown, we don’t have too much of the new material to go on about. What next?

Firstly, real life sucks. (Cough obligatory disclaimer cough). Second, what should we talk about? Should we talk about them bears some more? In AFO, the three best-known species have some –up – the brown bear, the American black bear, and the polar bear. The other bears species are quite famous themselves, (cough giant panda cough), but the aforementioned trio is the big three. Did you know that the polar bear is also known as the ice bear? I did not know, not until recently, anyhow. And-?

And if we are going to talk about trivia, let us talk about bats instead. Those small mammals are the only mammals that truly fly; everyone else is a glider instead. They do not even look anything like bats – seriously, compare a bat and a flying squirrel. The duo do not even have superficial similarities! Rather, a bat’s superficial similarities is with the bird and the extinct pterosaur; the three vertebrate groups are not really related to each other, but physically they seem to have more in common than with anyone else. Next?

The bats’ classification is a mess. Initially, they were thought to be more closely related to primates, but now they are considered to be a sister group to true carnivores, true ungulates and cetaceans. Sometimes scientific logic is hard to discern, and the fact that bat evolution isn’t much clearer than the modern bird one, isn’t helping – bats: appeared in the Eocene already…as did bears, for comparison, but whereas bears took some time acquiring their modern shape, the bats already sprung up largely primed and ready, save for the echolocation, of course.

Pause. There are eight species of existing bears (yet), and several extinct ones. All of them – the extinct cave bear and short-faced bear, the ancient giant panda and spectacled bear, (the only surviving relative of the short-faced bear family), the modern polar bear – they all are built around the same lines; the polar bear actually has viable hybrids with its’ closest relative, the brown bear, and that isn’t something that happens in nature very often. But what about bats?

So far, there is no case of bat hybrids – not in the wild and not in captivity. On their own, bats divide into megabats and microbats. The former are better known as fruit bats or flying foxes. Their echolocation is less derived, and their eyesight and sense of smell are better. That is because they eat mostly tropical fruits (and sometimes pollinate flowers), and you do not need echolocation to find them.

Some of the microbats also pollinate flowers, but most of them are carnivores and insectivores of one type or another. That said, they also differentiate into horseshoe bats and their relatives, who have elaborate nose leaves on their noses, and such bats as the free-tailed bats that have plain noses instead. (This division is not so clear-cut, but you get the gist). Otherwise, ecologically, the two bat groups are similar; there are bat species that are outright carnivores rather than insectivores, and the three true vampire bat species feed on blood, but in general? The majority of microbats eats insects and other invertebrates, just as most of megabats eat fruits. Is that it?

Yes, pretty much. People are pointing out that if I talked about Batman, my blog would be more popular, but I do not like DC, I do not like DCEU, and I do not really feel like talking about it. Maybe some other time instead. (Cough WW1984 movie cough).

…Well, this is it for now, then. See you all soon!