Photo by Connor Long
Pallid bats (Antrozous pallidus) are quirky little creatures, the sole species in their genus. Their long ears, which can equal half their body length, make them look quintessentially batty, but unlike most of their night hunting relatives, they prefer to tackle ground-dwelling dinners—a strategy called “gleaning.” Pallid bats glean as much as half their body weight in prey every night, and their diet includes a wide range of crunchy little critters, including crickets, praying mantis, and beetles.
It is their taste for scorpions, though, that is particularly intriguing, and piqued the curiosity of scientists. It was unknown whether the bats have a trick for catching scorpions that keeps them from being stung, or whether they are resistant to the animals’ agonizing toxins. In a new PlosONE paper, researchers show it’s the latter: the bats’ laissez-faire attitude towards venom stems from an invulnerability to scorpion neurotoxins due to alterations in the voltage-gated sodium channels that the toxins target. Continue reading “Tiny Bat Shrugs Off Stings From Deadly Scorpion”
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