THE BATS AND INSECT-EATING MAMMALS 145 
ATO 
Photo by Fratetlt Alinari| [ Florence 
PIPISTRELLE BAT 
This is one of the commonest bats. It is the first to appear tn the spring, and the last to retire at the fall of the year 
Ceylon, was some india-rubber-trees, “ where they used to assemble in such prodigious numbers that 
large boughs would not infrequently give way beneath the accumulated weight of the flock.” An 
observer in Calcutta relates that they occasionally travel in vast hordes, so great as to darken the 
sky. Whether they are performing some preconcerted migration or bent only ona foray to some 
distant feeding-ground is a matter for speculation. These hordes are quite distinct from the “ long 
strings’ which may be seen every evening in Calcutta on their way to neighbouring fruit-trees. 
One of the most remarkable of this group is the TuBE-NosED Fruit-pat, in which the 
nostrils are prolonged into a pair of relatively long tubes. Strangely enough, a group of insect- 
eating bats has developed similar though smaller tubes. Except in these bats, such tubes are 
unknown among mammals. Their function is not known. 
INSECT-EATING Bats. 
The vast majority of the bats comprising this group feed exclusively on insects. Some, 
however, have acquired the habit of 
fruit-eating, like the true fruit-bats ; 
and a few have developed quite ogre- 
like habits, for they drink blood— 
indeed, they subsist upon nothing else. 
This they obtain from animals larger 
than themselves. 
Many of the bats of this group 
have developed curious leaf-like expan- 
sions of skin around the nose and mouth, 
which are supposed to be endowed 
with a very delicate sense of touch. 
In some, as in the FLOWER-NOSED Bar, 
the nose-leaf is excessively developed, 
forming a large rosette. The upper 
border of this rosette is furnished with 
three stalked balls, the function of 
which it is surmised is probably orna- ie eas ease 
mental—from the bat's point of view. The leaf-nosed are the most highly organised of all the bats. The remarkable 
To our more esthetic taste the whole leaf-like folds of skin around the nose or chin, as the case may be, serve as delicatn 
effect is hideous. | organs of perception. There are numerous species of leaf-nosed bats 
a e. 
_ Photo by A. S. Rudland & Sons 
