Behavior and Diet
Although Macroderma gigas is inactive during daylight hours, they do not hibernate. Buildings may be used as feeding grounds, but the ghost bat only roosts in caves, rock crevices, or mines. The roost is left several hours after sunset either alone, in pairs, or in small groups. Hunting occurs via a sit and wait technique three to five hours after sundown. Although the ghost bat has astoundingly good vision for a microchiropteran, echolocation is utilized to directly locate approaching prey. Once located, the animal is held down via the thumb claws and killed by a single bite to the neck (Hudson, et al).
The ghost bat is carnivorous and commonly feeds on small mice, other bats, small birds, legless lizards, geckos, snakes, and insects. Macroderma gigas is formally referred to as a specialized carnivore, but they have been known to feed on insects if prey is scarce. Live prey is eaten much more frequently, though, and is usually consumed at the site of capture (Hudson, et al).
Read more about this topic: Ghost Bat
Famous quotes containing the words behavior and/or diet:
“To be told that our child’s behavior is “normal” offers little solace when our feelings are badly hurt, or when we worry that his actions are harmful at the moment or may be injurious to his future. It does not help me as a parent nor lessen my worries when my child drives carelessly, even dangerously, if I am told that this is “normal” behavior for children of his age. I’d much prefer him to deviate from the norm and be a cautious driver!”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)