Written by Rhishja Larson
Published on October 27th, 2009
Bat fact 3: Bats are not rodents – and are actually related to primates.
Bats are not even closely related to rodents. Although a shrew-like ancestor is shared by bats and primates, bats belong to their own group, the Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing”.
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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).