Brock Fenton (Professor Emeritus, Western University):
You can smell the ammonia as soon as you come in.
Nancy Simmons (Curator of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History):
There are 1,300 living species of bats. That is about 20% to 22% of all living mammals. We think that the great diversity of bats has to do with the fact that they occupy a really unusual niche for a mammal. That is, a nocturnal-flying-mammal niche. So, you have some roosting high up in trees. Others close to the ground. And different bats eating different kinds of things – nectar feeders, fruit feeders, carnivores, insectivores, and even blood-feeding bats, the vampires.
I'm an evolutionary biologist, interested in the evolution of diversity in body form of mammals, diets of mammals, species diversity of mammals. And bats are just a wonderful group to work on, because they're so diverse, so interesting, and they do so many different things.
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There are 1,300 living species of bats. That is about 20% to 22% of all living mammals. We think that the great diversity of bats has to do with the fact that they occupy a really unusual niche for a mammal. That is, a nocturnal-flying-mammal niche. So, you have some roosting high up in trees. Others close to the ground. And different bats eating different kinds of things – nectar feeders, fruit feeders, carnivores, insectivores, and even blood-feeding bats, the vampires.
Nancy Simmons (Curator of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History):
There are 1,300 living species of bats. That is about 20% to 22% of all living mammals. We think that the great diversity of bats has to do with the fact that they occupy a really unusual niche for a mammal. That is, a nocturnal-flying-mammal niche. So, you have some roosting high up in trees. Others close to the ground. And different bats eating different kinds of things – nectar feeders, fruit feeders, carnivores, insectivores, and even blood-feeding bats, the vampires.
I'm an evolutionary biologist, interested in the evolution of diversity in body form of mammals, diets of mammals, species diversity of mammals. And bats are just a wonderful group to work on, because they're so diverse, so interesting, and they do so many different things.