Bats are mammals. The word “mammal” comes from the Greek word mammae, meaning breasts. Like most mammals, bats give birth to their young. The young will feed on milk from their mothers. Bats have fur on their heads, backs, and bellies. This keeps them warm on cool nights, and in cool bat roosts. The babies will also hold onto their mother by grasping onto their fur.

Bats are gentle and shy creatures. They have lightweight bones and rubbery wings. They use their sharp teeth to cut and bite through to get food. All bats have feet with strong, grasping hooked claws. These claws help the bats to hang upside-down. Each species of bat has its own look, size, shape, and color. Cave dwellers are usually darkly colored, such as brown or gray. Fruit eaters and bats that live in trees may be light in color, such as red, silver-tipped, or yellow. The colors help them to look more like the leaves.

Each species also has its own distinct look. Some bats have heads that look like those of other mammals. Flying foxes have heads that look like foxes heads. Some bats have nice looking faces with shy and humanlike expressions. Many bats are so strange looking that they frighten people. Some bats have large horn shaped or pointed ears, large lumpy noses, and grooved, wrinkled mouths. The wrinkle faced bat may be the strangest bat in the world.

Each species of bat also has its own particular diet. Many eat insects, and some fed on fruit or pollen. Some eat fish, some eat meat such as birds and lizards, and as we all know, the vampire bat feeds on blood.