biomedicalephemera reblogged
My favorite creatures have some beautiful bones.
Die/Das Skelete [series]. Dr. E. D’Alton, 1821.
biomedicalephemera reblogged
Hammerhead Bat and Naked Bat
I believe this “Naked Bat” is the Sulawesi naked-backed fruit bat. There is also a naked-rumped pouched bat, from Australia and Bangladesh.
The New Natural History. Richard Lydekker, 1890s.
biomedicalephemera reblogged
Fruit bat of the subfamily Pteropodinae
The megabats of the Pteropodinae include the largest bats in the world: the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox (Acerodon jubatus) and the Large Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus), also known as the Malaysian Flying Fox.
The teeth of the family Pteropus, and especially of the subfamily Pteropodinae, are specially designed to rip open and grind up fruits, both juicy and fleshy. The large canines allow them to slash into thick skins, and the dextrous tongue and molars that are good for chewing (but not continued grinding) make an ideal dentition for most South Pacific fruits. Some fruit bats consume vegetation, pollen, or nectar, but Pteropodinae consumes almost exclusively fruit.
Fruit bats lack a tail and the ability to echolocate, like all Old-World bats. They have very good eyesight, and are thought to have split off from microbats (the New-World bats, including all of the carnivorous bats) during the Eocene epoch, around 45 million years ago.
AYY GURL!
Source: openlibrary.org
AYYY
I LIVE!
(sort of) (no promises as to how long)
Let me know what questions you have, what animals/plants you want to see, what conditions are interesting, or what body parts fascinate you.
Lost everything I had in the inbox previously. I tried to retrieve them via restore and the actual help system, but I lost my entire inbox aside from a solitary message from a discontinued account saying “BATS”. So if you want bats, I’m on it. Otherwise, request away.
biomedicalephemera reblogged
Vampire Bat - Desmodus rotundus
“Hey guys, got some spare blood? Promise it wont hurt!”
Animals that consume blood for sustenance are sanguivorous. Sanguine means “consisting of, or related to, blood”.
Vampire bats are the only purely-sanguivorus mammals, and have razor-sharp teeth and numbing saliva to keep their food sources asleep. The blood thinners in their saliva keep the blood flowing for several minutes after the initial bite. Despite their blood-sucking nature, vampire bats are some of the few mammals that will adopt another bat’s young should the mother die of disease or from predators. The young cling to their mothers for over three months, and rely upon their mother’s milk to supplement their diet for between five to six months, until the young learn to hunt sufficiently well on their own.
The Animal Kingdom, Arranged After its Organization; Forming a Natural History of Animals, and an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy. A scientifically updated translation of the works of Baron Cuvier, 1854.
Of the 1100+ bat species, only three are sanguinovores. Their comparatively-huge neocortex (the part of the brain that controls "personality" and what we consider to be "interpersonal relationships" resides here) is thought to be a direct result of the difficult nature of blood-dependence.
Blood is a surprisingly poor food source. In terrestrial mammals (the vampire bat's only food source), it's completely water, sugars, and proteins, and the lack of fats in it means that if vampire bats don't consume at least 50% of their body weight in blood every 48 hours, they will die.
Since vampire bats can't take a sick day or a break because of a difficult birth, the other colony members will feed their ill or injured peers, a trait rarely seen below the level of primates. After all, when just two days out of the game means that you're dead of exhaustion, it's no longer "survival of the fittest" - it's in the colony's best interest to keep each other alive.
biomedicalephemera reblogged
Vampire Bat - Desmodus rotundus
“Hey guys, got some spare blood? Promise it wont hurt!”
Animals that consume blood for sustenance are sanguivorous. Sanguine means “consisting of, or related to, blood”.
Vampire bats are the only purely-sanguivorus mammals, and have razor-sharp teeth and numbing saliva to keep their food sources asleep. The blood thinners in their saliva keep the blood flowing for several minutes after the initial bite. Despite their blood-sucking nature, vampire bats are some of the few mammals that will adopt another bat's young should the mother die of disease or from predators. The young cling to their mothers for over three months, and rely upon their mother's milk to supplement their diet for between five to six months, until the young learn to hunt sufficiently well on their own.
The Animal Kingdom, Arranged After its Organization; Forming a Natural History of Animals, and an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy. A scientifically updated translation of the works of Baron Cuvier, 1854.
Vespertilio spectrum (now Vampyrum spectrum) - The Spectral Bat
Also known as the false vampire bat and Linnaeus' vampire bat, the spectral bat may not bite humans like the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), but small animals and large insects have much more to fear from this stealthy hunter.
True vampire bats (Desmodus sp.) hunt by opening a small wound in an animal while it sleeps, with razor sharp teeth that don't even wake the victim. It laps up the blood, and flies away undetected. The fact that the animals are almost always unharmed by this encounter makes true vampire bats the only parasitic mammals.
Spectral bats, on the other hand, are absolute hunters. They do not drink blood like true vampire bats, and often hunt much like owls, stealthily patrolling the edges of forests at night, and swooping down to attack and consume large insects, small mammals, reptiles, and even other bats (whose distress calls can attract many spectral bats from miles around).
The spectral bat is much larger than the true vampire bats, and has large ears and decent sight. It hunts by using its large canine teeth to puncture either the cervical arteries or the brain-case of small vertebrates, or sever the head of insects. Like the true vampires, spectral bats are nocturnal, and live in the Americas. However, they're not as ubiquitous, being confined mostly to the northwest quadrant of South America, and living almost exclusively in forested regions.
Images:
Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur. Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, 1775.
Fruit bat of the subfamily Pteropodinae
The megabats of the Pteropodinae include the largest bats in the world: the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox (Acerodon jubatus) and the Large Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus), also known as the Malaysian Flying Fox.
The teeth of the family Pteropus, and especially of the subfamily Pteropodinae, are specially designed to rip open and grind up fruits, both juicy and fleshy. The large canines allow them to slash into thick skins, and the dextrous tongue and molars that are good for chewing (but not continued grinding) make an ideal dentition for most South Pacific fruits. Some fruit bats consume vegetation, pollen, or nectar, but Pteropodinae consumes almost exclusively fruit.
Fruit bats lack a tail and the ability to echolocate, like all Old-World bats. They have very good eyesight, and are thought to have split off from microbats (the New-World bats, including all of the carnivorous bats) during the Eocene epoch, around 45 million years ago.
Source: openlibrary.org
biomedicalephemera reblogged
n152_w1150 by BioDivLibrary on Flickr.
Säugethiere vom Celebes- und Philippinen-Archipel, 1-2. Berlin :R. Friedländer & sohn,1896-9. biodiversitylibrary.org/item/106169
Pteropus whitmeei (now Pteropus samoensis) - Samoa Flying Fox
The megabat of Samoa is an impressive sight to see, and plays a role in Polynesian mythology, as well as being a food source to native Samoans. On the island of Savai'i, there is a legend of Nafanua, the goddess of war, being rescued by flying foxes when she was stranded on a desolate island.
On a half-related note, the Samoan word for "flying fox", pe'a, is also the word for the traditional Samoan male tattoo.
Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 1874.
Mystacina tuberculata and Molossus norfolcensis [now Mormopterus norfolkensis?] - The New Zealand Lesser Short-Tailed Bat and East-Coast Free-Tailed Bat (?)
These scientific names are getting harder and harder to figure out the modern equivalents to...
Anyway. There's a long-tailed bat that's native to New Zealand, but it looks nothing like the bat depicted as Molossus norfolcensis. The bat is clearly a member of the family Molossidae - the free-tailed bats - but it's unclear which specific species this one is. The east-coast free-tailed bat has a range most likely to include any of the New Zealand islands, as well as having a similar facial structure as the bat depicted here.
The Zoology of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Erebus & Terror, 1839-1843. John Richardson, 1845.
Nyctophilus geoffroyi and Nyctophilus major - Lesser Long-Eared Bat and Greater Long-Eared Bat
Both of these bats are Australian natives. The lesser long-eared bat looks mean as hell in Haeckel's Chiroptera illustration...
The Zoology of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Erebus & Terror, 1839-1843. John Richardson, 1845.
British Wildlife - Red Legged Crow, Short Eared Owl, Horseshoe Bat, Crow, Bustard
I'll be honest. I only posted these because I love their expressions. Wildlife illustration may have come a long ways since 1776, but I still love the funky old expressions the animals have.
British Zoology. Benjamin White, 1776.
Hammerhead Bat and Naked Bat
I believe this "Naked Bat" is the Sulawesi naked-backed fruit bat. There is also a naked-rumped pouched bat, from Australia and Bangladesh.
The New Natural History. Richard Lydekker, 1890s.
Insectivorous bat heads and a "red flying lemur bat" [a species of gliding lemur, now commonly known as the colugo]
Though currently believed to have evolved from insectivorous land mammals, such as shrews, the insectivorous bats were once thought to be most closely related to the "flying" lemur, also known as the colugos.
Flying lemurs can't fly (as they glide like flying squirrels and flying phalangers), nor are they true lemurs, but they're currently believed to be the closest extant relative of the True Primates and Treeshrews (which, incidentally, are not closely related to the ground shrews that the insectivorous bats are related to).
The Animal Kingdom, Arranged According to its Organization. Serving as a Foundation for the Natural History of Animals and an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy. Baron Cuvier, 1837.
Vampire Bat.
"Hey guys, got some spare blood? Promise it wont hurt!"
Animals that consume blood for sustenance are sanguivorous. Sanguine means "consisting of, or related to blood".
The Animal Kingdom, Arranged After its Organization; Forming a Natural History of Animals, and an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy. A scientifically updated translation of the works of Baron Cuvier, 1854.