Vampire bats are a Halloween staple, and now they’ve got company. Another bat species snatches birds out of the air for a gruesome midnight feast.
Songbird DNA has previously shown up in the guano of three bat species, so researchers knew these flying mammals were eating more than just insects. But how, exactly, does a bat hunt a bird? It turns out that Europe’s largest bat, the greater noctule, is a formidable aerial hunter that captures, dismembers and consumes migrating songbirds for the ultimate in-flight meal, researchers report in the Oct. 9 Science.
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