How Many Species of Bats Exist?
“Hello I’m Dr. Christine Portfors. I’m an associate professor in the school of biological sciences at Washington State University Vancouver. And here today we’re going to be talking about how many bat species exist. Current count is over 1,000 different species. A number of years ago it was actually documented at 1,073 and it may have changed a little bit since then because of new genetic techniques, some species are emerging and ones that used to be the same are now actually being divided into two. But bats with over 1,000 different species live on every continent except Antarctica and are very diverse. So most of the bat species live in the tropics and that’s where you have most of the diversity. You have small bats, big bats, medium sized bats, ones that eat fruit, ones that eat nectar, some that drink blood, some that eat insects, some that eat frogs, so a lot of diversity.
