Peter Daszak is part of the World Health Organization’s 14-member team investigating the origins of the coronavirus. This weekend on Twitter he described “explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China” to journalists — only to see team members “selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began.” Daszak was responding to a New York…
Tag: Bats
Bats soar to heights of 1600 metres by riding late night winds
By fitting bats with GPS collars we have discovered that the nocturnal fliers seek out slopes where late night winds are swept upwards, carrying them high into the air Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2266807-bats-soar-to-heights-of-1600-metres-by-riding-late-night-winds/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Bats that eat insects should be able to taste sweet food but can’t
Insectivorous bats have the same sweet taste receptors as fruit bats, but have lost the ability to actually taste sweet food Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2266718-bats-that-eat-insects-should-be-able-to-taste-sweet-food-but-cant/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Scientists Observe Live Cells Responding To Magnetic Fields For First Time
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: One of the most remarkable “sixth” senses in the animal kingdom is magnetoreception — the ability to detect magnetic fields — but exactly how it works remains a mystery. Now, researchers in Japan may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle, making the first observations of live, unaltered cells responding to…
Bats are superheroes of the night. Their superpowers could help us protect them.
Conservationists are using bats’ echolocation abilities to help track these mammals, as many of them succumb to white nose syndrome. Source: https://www.livescience.com/bat-conservation-echolocation.html
Discovery of ‘Cryptic Species’ Shows Earth is Even More Biologically Diverse
A growing number of “cryptic species” hiding in plain sight have been unmasked in the past year, driven in part by the rise of DNA barcoding, a technique that can identify and differentiate between animal and plant species using their genetic divergence. From a report: The discovery of new species of aloe, African leaf-nosed bats and chameleons that appear similar to…
SARS-CoV-2 relative found lurking in frozen bats from Cambodia
For the first time, close relatives of the novel coronavirus have been found outside China. Source: https://www.livescience.com/related-coronaviruses-cambodia-japan.html
Earless moths have acoustic camouflage that protects them from bats
Earless moths have a special pattern on their wings for absorbing sound. It acts as protection from bats, which use echolocation to find their prey Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2260621-earless-moths-have-acoustic-camouflage-that-protects-them-from-bats/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
World’s ugliest bats sing through ‘face masks’ made of skin to woo the ladies
Scientists recently documented never-before-seen mating behavior in wrinkle-faced bats, in which males pull a furry flap of skin over their faces. Source: https://www.livescience.com/ugly-bats-face-masks.html
The first flying dinosaurs were a failed evolutionary experiment
Yi qi and Ambopteryx longibrachium, the first dinosaurs to take to the air, had wings made of membranes like bats, but they could barely glide and were soon outcompeted by birds Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2257732-the-first-flying-dinosaurs-were-a-failed-evolutionary-experiment/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…