What do bats eat?
There are more than 1,100 different species of bats in the world, living on every continent except Antarctica. Each one has developed special adaptations for how it lives and what it eats. For example, 70% of all the bats in the world eat insects and many of them use echolocation in order to find food and move around in the dark. Many small insectivorous bats can eat up to 2,000 mosquito-sized insect in one night. These bats are able to eat so much because they have high metabolisms and expend lots of energy in flight. Frugivorous bats living in tropical climates have very good eyesight and sense of smell for finding ripe fruit to eat. In the desert, there are nectar-feeding bats which have long noses and tongues for harvesting nectar from flowers, as well as special enzymes for digesting the high-protein pollen that accumulates on their faces. Carnivorous bats have sharp claws and teeth for catching small vertebrates such as fish, frogs, birds, or rodents. A few Latin American bats, t
