#bat evolution

Bats are one of the most extraordinary groups of mammals alive today. These fantastic flying animals are the second most diverse order of living mammals, beaten only by rodents. Despite their astonishing modern diversity, the origin of bats is still poorly understood. The early evolution of this spectacular group of animals is one of the most intriguing mysteries in palaeontology, and the study of bat evolution and their relationships has resulted in some pretty intense debate among scientists.

Bats pretty much appear in the fossil record as recognizable, full-on, flying bats. And they show up on all of the continents, except Antarctica, around the same time. So where did bats come from? And which of the many weird features that bats have, showed up first?

The Evolution of bats is a mystery because for the first 10 million years or so after the dinosaurs went extinct there are no bats and then all of sudden bat fossils can be discovered all over the world. However, just because their evolution is poorly does not mean that it is completely in the dark. This video pieces together the bits that are known and explains why there is a bat explosion in the fossil record.

“Despite the common saying, bats aren’t actually blind—but about 85% of bat species can hunt in the dark by tracking the echoes of their own voices, an ability called laryngeal echolocation. (See the article by Whit Au and Jim Simmons, Physics Today, September 2007, page 40.) The remaining 15%, a group called the Old World fruit bats (for example, the lesser short-nosed fruit bat shown here), rely on plain old eyesight. This finding has led to a fierce debate among evolutionary biologists: Did bats descend from a single ancestor capable of laryngeal echolocation, with fruit bats losing the ability somewhere along the way? Or did laryngeal echolocation evolve independently in different branches of the bat family tree?”