Bats: 10 Essential Bat Facts, Plus Photo Gallery!
Bat fact 2: Bats’ knees face backwards.
The position of bats’ knees aids in the bat’s ability to navigate in flight and to hang by its feet. Bats cling to their roosts without expending energy, using specialized tendons that hold their toes in place. In order to let go of the roosting surface, bats must flex their toe muscles.
Pictured: Greater horseshoe bat
Image: .flickr.com/sanmartin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
This is actually not true. Recent studies have shown that bats belong to a clade called Laurasiatheria, that includes moles, shrews, cetaceans, ungulates, carnivores, pangolines, etc. Primates, on the other hand, are more closely related to lagomorphs and rodents than to bats. A good review of the higher-level phylogeny of mammals is “The new framework for understanding placental mammal evolution” BioEssays (2009) 31: 853-864
I didn’t realize bats pollinated! This is especially good since I had heard that honeybees are disappearing (I guess due to insecticides or other reasons – I’m not sure why).