Why are there no bats of prey?

[Gelatinous squid]

I suppose owls took that niche but bats have been around since the Eocene. It seems odd that they never developed into large=prey predators. 

[Troodon]

Bats are the primary predator for flying insects.  And my understanding is that a few are Carnivorous bats hunting small vertebrates as mice and frogs, so they have evolved.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/worlds-carnivorous-bats-are-emerging-dark-180959042/

 

 

[jpc]

Bats do all sorts of things but they are very species (or genus) specific.  Most are indeed insectivorous but there are many pollen eaters, as well as small vertebrate eaters and fishing bats and of course the only mammal that feeds mainly on blood.     

[JBkansas]

This one is a conventional "bat of prey" snatching songbirds in midflight:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9605365

[North]

I would say bats could evolve to hunt larger prey if birds of prey would have gone extinct. Most bats are already nocturnal so they avoid competition with birds and being preyed by large birds like hawks.

 

Most bats are using echolocation, which works well at nightime on flying animals, but not as well on animals on ground.

Like mentioned earlier, some bats like spectral bat do hunt small animals. Theory is that they use sense of smell to find their prey.

Most birds use eyesight and owls also use hearing to locate prey, which is more suited to hunt larger animals from ground. Most birds are also better flyers than most bats, making competition on daytime harder. So birds have advantage over bats.

[siteseer]

On 4/20/2023 at 2:54 AM, Troodon said:

Bats are the primary predator for flying insects.  And my understanding is that a few are Carnivorous bats hunting small vertebrates as mice and frogs, so they have evolved.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/worlds-carnivorous-bats-are-emerging-dark-180959042/

 

 

 

 

Years ago, I watched a documentary about bats.  It showed a frog-eating bat (snatching one from a pond) and also a bat-eating frog (waiting at a cave entrance and catching one as it flew by)..

[siteseer]

On 4/30/2023 at 6:37 AM, North said:

I would say bats could evolve to hunt larger prey if birds of prey would have gone extinct. Most bats are already nocturnal so they avoid competition with birds and being preyed by large birds like hawks.

 

Most bats are using echolocation, which works well at nightime on flying animals, but not as well on animals on ground.

Like mentioned earlier, some bats like spectral bat do hunt small animals. Theory is that they use sense of smell to find their prey.

Most birds use eyesight and owls also use hearing to locate prey, which is more suited to hunt larger animals from ground. Most birds are also better flyers than most bats, making competition on daytime harder. So birds have advantage over bats.

 

 

The earliest bats known from xkeletons already show adaptations for good flying ability.  These are the Green River specimens (a little older than the Messel ones) which are Early Eocene age.  However, this indicates that more primitive bats myst have existed in the Paleocene and I think at least one researcher has suggested they might have originated in the Late Cretaceous.  By the end of the Paleocene, modern bird orders were already getting established so bats could only compete as small nocturnal predators in most areas.

[North]

11 hours ago, siteseer said:

 

 

The earliest bats known from xkeletons already show adaptations for good flying ability.  These are the Green River specimens (a little older than the Messel ones) which are Early Eocene age.  However, this indicates that more primitive bats myst have existed in the Paleocene and I think at least one researcher has suggested they might have originated in the Late Cretaceous.  By the end of the Paleocene, modern bird orders were already getting established so bats could only compete as small nocturnal predators in most areas.

Yes, we get major diversity of bats at eocene, but don't know much about their evolution.

Eocene bat necromantis, might be closest what we have to bat of prey.

 

Genetics show that closest relatives from modern animals are from eulipothyphla (hedgehogs, moles etc).

For my logic, similar lifestyle of hedgehog or shrew could have worked for bat ancestors during cretaceous and after extinction event, climbing to the trees could have been benefitial for avoiding predators and cliding for minimising time on ground.

Edited May 6, 2023 by North