A GIANT species of European bat regularly dines on birds— a first for
the bat world.
Carlos Ibáñez from the Doñana Biological Station in
Seville, Spain, and his team looked at 14,000 fecal pellets from Nyctalus
lasiopterus. They found a huge number of bird feathers in the pellets in
the spring and autumn, when millions of small birds migrate through the
Mediterranean basin at night (Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, vol 98, p 9700). They suspect the bats are capable of chasing
birds down in flight, another first for bats.
