Mondo Knows Facts
A bat's wing is skin stretched over fingers
The finger bones are elongated and the membrane between them is flexible leather There are muscles inside the membrane, so the wing shape adjusts continuously in flight. That control lets bats turn sharply and land upside down. Bats make up about a fifth of all mammal species. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
A penguin's wing is a stiff bone flipperThe joints barely bend, which makes it efficient in water and useless in airBats leave a roost at sunset in a rushGroups emerge from a cave within a few minutes, warmest and hungriest firstVampire bats share regurgitated blood with starving roost matesBats exchange blood meals with roost partners who failed to feed.A hunting bat can call 200 times a secondThe rate rises as it closes on an insectBats are the only mammals capable of true sustained flightWing membranes stretched over elongated finger bones enable bat flight.Wandering albatrosses can fly thousands of miles without flappingAlbatrosses exploit ocean wind shear gradients using dynamic soaring.
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Tags: bats, wings, flight
A bat's wing is skin stretched over fingers: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The finger bones are elongated and the membrane between them is flexible leather. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.