Bats (Chiroptera)

This group gathers Mammals subcategory members belonging to the order Chiroptera, the only mammals capable of true, sustained flight, achieved with a wing formed from a thin skin membrane stretched across a greatly elongated set of finger bones. It spans the larger fruit and nectar feeding bats of the Old World tropics, such as the flying foxes, which navigate largely by sight and smell, and the far more numerous smaller, mostly insect eating bats found on every continent except Antarctica, most of which navigate and hunt in darkness using echolocation, emitting high frequency calls and interpreting the returning echoes. A small number of species instead feed on blood, nectar, fish or small vertebrates, making Chiroptera, after the rodents, the second largest mammalian order by number of living species.