Image:USFWS/Ann FroschauerWhen it comes to fast flying animals, our minds naturally turn to the birds. But it turns out that, just like birds, some bats fly quickly while others mosey about. Here, scientists employed planes to track the flights of 7 bats (T. brasiliensis), and came away with a new flight record for speed:
We tracked a total of seven bats, one bat per night, from the air between 8 July and 15 July 2009. For this, one person (M.W.) flew with a Cessna 172 from Garner Field Airport, Uvalde, Texas, towards the Frio Bat Cave while another person (T.H.K.) was stationed at the entrance of Frio Cave to await the nightly emergence of the bats. With the airplane in place, T.H.K. caught one bat with a hand net out of the column of emerging bats. We only tracked post-lactating females weighing 11–12 g. A 0.45 g radio transmitter was ...
