The enature.com email today is about bats. I was extremely surprised to read the following:
"Bats look like mice with wings, but they are not rodents. In fact, they have their own distinct group within the class of mammals, and this group is among mammals' most successful. Of the approximately 4,000 known species of mammal, nearly a quarter — 950 species — are bats. No other living group of mammals has proliferated so successfully. "
I'm extremely surprised, first, because there are only 4,000 species of mammals. Really! I read somewhere that during the decade between 1980 and 1990, 10,000 species of animals (obviously not all mammals) disappeared from the earth. But to read today that there are only 4,000 species of mammals? Could this be correct?
And then to read that of the 4,000 species of mammals (if true), almost 1/4 of those mammals are bat species. Un-frigging-believable. Think about it.
Maybe that doesn't strike anybody else out there in AWAD-World as being a pretty cool, incredible statistic, but it sure gives me new respect for bats.
Oh, I'll come back and post a url so you all can read the whole article, short as it is.
Not minding to be corrected by those more knowledgeable,
WW
