Bats in tropical regions are fertilizing trees with their excretions. An international team of scientists recently discovered that seeds of a tropical tree species, which regularly hosts bats in ...

We found bats in colder regions predictably gain more weight before winter. But in warmer regions with highly seasonal rainfall, such as tropical savannas or monsoonal forests, bats also fatten up. In ...

Tropical Reforestation Aided By Bats Date: April 28, 2008 Source: Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. Summary: German scientists are engaging bats to kick-start natural reforestation in the tropics by ...

Many people would not describe bats as cute. This is likely because of bats’ associations with viruses, darkness, and evil. Granted, bats are somewhat weird animals, being the only mammals that can ...

Our intrepid reporter joins tropical bat researchers in the field one night and gains some appreciation for their fangs. Paul Bisceglio. January 30, 2014. Get our newsletter! Get our newsletter!

I drove to Sarapiquí, a little-known region in Costa Rica, during a brief respite of dry weather between Hurricanes Eta and Iota in search of a miniature tropical bat. Here, conservation efforts ...

New experiments at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) show that by changing their approach angle, the echolocating leaf-nosed bats can use this sixth sense to find acoustically ...

In the arms race between predators and prey, each evolves more and more sophisticated ways of catching or escaping from the other. Rachel Page, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research ...

Eighty-eight percent of the reported cases of bat catches were due to web-building spiders, with giant tropical orb-weaving spiders with a leg-span of 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) seen ...

Mariana Muñoz Romo, a bat biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who was not involved in the study, said she wasn’t ready to label the behavior as lekking.

Bat-eating spiders are common and apparently creep around every continent, except Antarctica, devouring various bat species. Here, a dead bat (Rhinolophus cornutus orii) caught in the web of a ...