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The Ecuadorian nectar bat (Anoura fistulata) has a tongue that is 150% the length of its body, proportionally the longest tongue of any mammal in relation to body size. Stored in the bat's chest between the heart and the sternum, the Tongue unfurls to its full glory to feed on tubular flowers.
Many, many thanks to Tom Bagley for the amazing illustration, and Happy Halloween!
Although really it looks more like a mouse in a costume.
A beautiful drawing by Ernst Haeckel
and some bat blogs for your reading pleasure:
BatHead (Bats in airplane nose art)
a whole page of bat links
and of course, Bat Conservation International
In my search for bat cakes I came across some wonderful examples of halloween confectionary including a bloody skull cake, a haunted house cake, a haunted island cake, and of course the ever popular halloween wedding cake (examples here and here); but not one really good bat cake did I find.
However, I did find this lovely cake topper (and this person makes a pretty kick-ass crow cake topper as well) so for lazy bakers, this is the batty timesaver you're looking for.
I named my first dog after this guy. He's a character from a kid's TV show called Eureeka's Castle that I never actually watched. But I sure liked the toy.
What can I say? He's a four-eyed bat, too!
It sure is hard to get a good shot of a bat. Most of the time when I walk by their exhibit they're all wrapped up asleep so they just look like withered fruit hanging from the ceiling. Today they were quite lively, squabbling over melons and bananas; but most of the enclosure is glass, and all I got was a lot of reflections and blurred bat action. Finally I stuck my camera up to the wire mesh on the side of the cage and got a few shots that way, but you don't want to use your flash, so most of what I got was bat silhouettes. The kicker was that they were all hanging around posing for me!
Oh well. I'll try again. Those bats haven't beaten me yet.
Beautiful bat illustrations by Bwana Spoons.
