SENSORY ADAPTATIONS OF CATS. 153 



season or temperature nor are any of the periods dependent upon 

 the physical environment. 



Feeding Habits and the Perception of Food. 



The feeding habits of bats are by no means easy to study. 

 They habitually secure their food while flying, and then only dur- 

 ing twilight or darkness when it is impossible to distinguish their 

 movements accurately. In a state of nature their food consists 

 largely, perhaps wholly, of insects. The single time that I have 

 seen a bat feeding in daylight near enough to distinguish its prey, 

 it was catching small ephermerids and diptera. At dusk they 

 can sometimes be seen pursuing larger insects, apparently beetles. 

 The food is so thoroughly masticated that examination of stomach 

 contents furnishes no definite clue to the identity of the things 

 eaten. Neither does the food that an animal will eat in captivity 

 afford an index to its natural food. Meal worms seem to be the 

 favorite article of diet of captive bats. Fresh meat is eaten readily. 

 They will also eat a small worm {Tiibifcx) which lives only in 

 mud and certainly is never eaten by the animals in nature and has 

 not been by their ancestors since the flying habit was acquired. 



Dobson i^'j'i) states that a fruit bat [Cynoptcnis) which he cap- 

 tured in Calcutta consumed a banana twice its own weight in three 

 hours. Whitaker ^ states that the hairy armed bat, Plergystes 

 leislcri, eats about five dozen meal worms a day, and that a 

 female noctule, P. noctula''' after several days fasting, during 

 which she gave birth to young, consumed eight dozen meal 

 worms in one evening. None of the bats which I have had in 

 captivity have been voracious eaters. Captive bats will learn to 

 eat meal worms greedily when they are offered to the animal 

 with the fingers or a pair of forceps. Only on one or two occa- 

 sions have I ever seen a bat pick up food from the floor. When 

 a meal worm is taken between a pair of forceps and held 

 before a bat, the animal will snap at it eagerly, especially if the 

 worm is wriggling. However, its efforts are not well directed 

 and it is as apt to get the forceps in its mouth, or to miss the 

 objects completely, as it is to seize the worm. 



When food is accidently dropped the bat does not make any 



"07. ='05. 



