Rainforest: Canopy-Bats

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Rainforest: Canopy-Bats
By Rhett Butler
Mongabay.com

Although most bats of the world are insectivores, rainforests have a high percentage of fruit eaters. While insectivorous and other carnivorous bats rely on echolocation to find their prey, fruit-eating bats depend mostly on sight and a sophisticated sense of smell. True fruit-eating bats, the flying foxes of Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Australia, did not reach the New World, so their niche was filled by spear-nosed fruit bats which evolved from insect-eating bats. Today, countless canopy plant species depend on bats for pollination or seed dispersal, making bats the best mammalian dispersal agents.

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