Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1893 — Nocturnal Creatures. [ARTICLE]

Nocturnal Creatures.

Most curious in origin of all nocturnal insect-hunters, however, are the leatherywinged bats, which may be regarded, practically speaking, as very tiny monkeys, highly Bpeoializd for the task of catching nocturnal flees and midge*. Few people know how nearly they a re related to us. They belong to the selfsame division of the higher mammals as man and the apes; their skeleton answers to ours, bone for bone and joint for joint, in an extraordinary manner; only the unessential fact that they have very long fingers with a web between as an organ of flight prevents us from intantly and instinctively recognizing them as remote cousins once removed from the gorilla. The female bat in particular i* absurdly human. Most of them feed off insects alone, but a few,* like the famous vampire bats of South America, take a mean advantage of sleeping animals, and suck their blood after the fashion of mosquitoes, as they lie defenseless in the forests or on tho open pampas. Others, like the flying foxes of the Malay arohipelago, make a frugal meal off fruits and vegetables, but even these are persistent night fliers. They hang, head downward, from the boughs of trees during the hot trophical daytime, but sally forth at night, with Milton’s sons of Belial, to rob the banana patches and invade the plantain grounds of the industrious native. The bat is a lemur compelled by dire need to become a flying night bird. —[Cornhill Magazine.