VAMPIRE bats have turned out to be the sprinters of the bat world. Daniel Riskin and John Hermanson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, wanted to understand how vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) walked, so they rigged up a special bat treadmill and videotaped their movements. As they turned up the speed, the bats kept pace. Then, to the researchers’ surprise, the animals broke into a run.
“There was a definite change in gait,” says Riskin. The bats clocked in at 1.2 metres per second, and Riskin reckons they could have gone even faster if the treadmill had been larger. It is the first account of…
