Bats, Man!

[chomiji]

My colleague Bob wrote tomorrow's intranet interest column about bats. (He usually likes to do nature subjects, which is fine with me!) Anyway, I was combing the Intarwebs for .gov/.edu photos that would be OK to use "for educational purposes" and found a marvelous page of photos of a couple of Big Brown Bat in flight, taken in a lab. The wings are just amazing in the way they flex to take the air as the bat maneuvers.

It's also kind of amazing that this "big" brown bat is actually such a teeny creature: here's a photo of a young girl being shown a Big Brown Bat, which is held in the naturalist's gloved hand ... it's so little and frail-looking.