Researchers have developed a computer algorithm that can imitate the bat’s ability to classify plants using echolocation. The study, published March 21st in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, represents a collaboration between machine learning scientists and biologists studying bat orientation.

Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency. University of Michigan engineers are studying these animals as a step toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards.

An epidemic of some strange illness spread among bats in northeastern U.S. and caused death of thousands of animals. New York state wildlife officials say that this may be fraught with extinction.

Bats are the most vocal mammals other than humans, and understanding how they communicate during their nocturnal outings could lead to better treatments for human speech disorders, say researchers at Texas A&M University.

New research shows how different species of plants evolve unique floral adaptations in order to transfer pollen on different regions of bats’ bodies, thus allowing multiple plant species to share bats as pollinators.

A collaborative team of scientists reported findings today demonstrating the presence of Marburg virus RNA genome and antibodies in a common species of African fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus).

Do bats use their ultrasonic echolocation calls to recognise their own species" A new study in the Journal of Biogeography by Danilo Russo and colleagues suggests that this is certainly the case for horseshoe bats (Rhinolophidae). These bats find their way in the dark and detect insect prey by emitting long ultrasound calls mainly made of a constant frequency.

An expedition led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to a remote corner of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has uncovered unique forests which, so far, have been found to contain six animal species new to science: a bat, a rodent, two shrews, and two frogs.

Nectar-feeding bats burn sugar faster than any other mammal on Earth – and three times faster than even top-class athletes – ecologists have discovered. The findings, published online in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, illustrate that because they live life on an energetic knife edge, these bats are very vulnerable to any changes in their environment that interrupt their fuel supply for even a short period.

Working in the Department of Ecology and Organismal Biology, Justin Boyles and Jonathan Storm examined the possibility of a link between dietary specialization and the risk of extinction for bats in Australia, Europe and North America.

central eastern Queensland mine has turned up bat fossils which show climate change has had a negative impact on the state's bat population.

The retinas of most mammals contain two types of photoreceptor cells, the cones for daylight vision and colour vision, and the more sensitive rods for night vision. Nocturnal bats were traditionally believed to possess only rods. Now scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and at The Field Museum for Natural History in Chicago have discovered that nocturnal fruit bats (flying foxes) possess cones in addition to rods.