The most common one is an involuntary shudder, as what a friend of mine had during our stroll near Adelaide Zoo. That's where a camp of grey-headed flying foxes is found. As we looked up, we saw many noisy creatures hanging upside down like what humans did from a chin-up bar but without falling – and her heart started racing. She almost had a heart attack.
Beliefs about bats are entangled with mixed reactions, from that of vampires and Count Dracula to the symbol of long life and happiness.
The success story of bats happens to be the theme of recent August issue of National Geographic. The article will change your impression of this creepy mammal. Among them, one of evolution's success stories is bats' adaptation, evolving from tree gliders to the only mammals that fly. Bat flight is a prime example of engineering design. They don't consciously make every split-second decision to navigate in a small dark cave. The soft tissue of bat wings simply deforms and reshapes in response to air pressure without need to bother their brain's air traffic control centre. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi will call that flow, and engineers call that passive dynamics.
Another superpower of bats is their extreme longevity. As one of the smallest mammals, bats actually live up to 10 times longer than expected for their body size. How can that be? They are able to shut down their metabolism when at rest. The most amazing achievement of bats, if you ask doctors, is their immunity against a host of viruses. Ebola is one. Marburg virus is another. Their exceptional ability to live with the pathogens without falling sick or showing symptoms, according to most scientists, is an evolutionary advantage when bats live in extremely dense populations.
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