Brian Cox TV - David Attenborough & Natural World TV - Life on Fire & Jeremy Irons TV - Lewis Carroll - John Berryman - John Gay - William Shakespeare - Ebola Exposed TV - Richard Dawkins - Lost Land of the Volcano TV - Mexico: Festival of Life TV - Inside the Bat Cave TV -
5,642. A bat’s size clearly affects the speed at which it lives its life. (Life & Bats) Professor Brian Cox, Wonders of Life IV: Size Matters
51,753. Some bats also used the crèche system. (Animals & Bats) David Attenborough, The Trials of Life II: Growing Up
51,786. For a Vampire [bat] it pays to help your neighbours whether they are related or not. (Animals & Bats) David Attenborough, The Trials of Life IX: Friends and Rivals
52,111. Bats: Caves like this in Mexico contain the densest population of individual mammals found anywhere on Earth. (Animals & Mammals & Bats) David Attenborough: Life on Earth: Mammals (revised series)
52,139. Bats: Flight and the ability to catch insects on the wing is an extraordinary achievement. (Mammals & Animals & Insects & Bats) David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals II: Insect Hunters *****
52,183. Fruit bats are extremely strong fliers. They can travel great distances. (Animals & Mammals & Bats) David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals VIII: Life in the Trees
52,184. This roost alone contains a staggering five million. (Animals & Mammals & Bats) ibid.
52,240. There are also small fury mammals – bats ... they’re flying out to catch their evening meal of insects ... Bats are latecomers to the skies. (Birds & Animals & Mammals & Bats) David Attenborough, The Life of Birds I: To Fly or Not to Fly?
52,460. Flowers that are pollinated by bats are rather more pungent. (Flowers & Bats) David Attenborough’s Kingdom of Plants III
52,557. The rain forests of Belize in central America. And as evening falls and the shower comes to an end a predator begins to hunt: the greater bulldog bat, a flying mammal and a fisherman. (Animals & Hunting & Bats & Mammals) David Attenborough, Life: Hunters and Hunted e7
64,842. Bats: Our night is their day. The time when they feed and fight and mate and live our lives which we never see. High in the Belfry, the first animals start to stir. By human standards bats are upside down creatures. David Attenborough
64,843. They are flying now all around my head. This cave, this particular part of it – Oooh! [nearly sick] the ammonia is really quite choking – makes a very perfect place for a home. ibid.
64,844. This great dune is not a dune of sand. It’s a dune of guano, of animal droppings of one kind and another. The entire surface is covered of it is covered by a glistening moving carpet of cockroaches. ibid.
64,845. How prolific this part of Borneo can be. That is can support all this enormity of bats ... What a marvellous place some animals think a cave is in which to live. (Bats & Borneo & Cave) ibid.
64,846. Here is one of those fruit bats. ibid. David Attenborough with Mr Dolby of London Zoo, black and white film
64,847. A very foxy looking face. ibid.
104,802. Mexico: a wild man. The animals that live here do so in greater numbers and varieties than almost anywhere else on Earth. With so much at stake one man has fought tirelessly to protect the wildlife of Mexico. But there’s a particular creature he’s devoted his life to saving. Rodrigo Medellin is the champion of one of the world’s most hated animals – bats. (Mexico & Bats) David Attenborough, The Bat Man of Mexico – Natural World, BBC 2017
104,803. ‘They call me the Bat Man.’ (Mexico & Bats) ibid.
104,804. There are thousands of bats here of many different species. (Mexico & Bats) ibid.
104,805. Without bats there would be no tequila. Bats are so vital in spreading pollen and seeds that they’re known as the farmers of the tropics. Without them our crops and forests would collapse. (Mexico & Bats) ibid.
111,497. The vampire bat: Stories of giant blood-sucking bats have long been part of the culture of South American people. (Animal & Bats) Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities s2e5: Bad Reputation
111,498. They must consume 50% of their own body weight in blood each night. (Animal & Bats) ibid.
111,499. There is another gentler side to these bats. (Animal & Bats) ibid.
52,072. Bats have made their home in the volcano’s labyrinth. (Animals & Volcano & Bats) Life on Fire, Phoenix Temple: Jeremy Irons narrator
64,839. Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly!
Like a teatray in the sky. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
64,848. Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made. John Berryman
64,849. The sun was set; the night came on apace,
And falling dews bewet around the place;
The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings,
And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings. John Gay, Shepherd’s Week, Wednesday; or The Dumps
64,850. Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight. William Shakespeare, Macbeth III ii 40
64,851. On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily. William Shakespeare, The Tempest V i 91
92,834. It all seems to start with bats. Ebola jumped into humans be mistake. (Virus & Ebola & Bats) Ebola Exposed, Discovery 2015
96,791. I’ve speculated, in The Blind Watchmaker and elsewhere, that bats may ‘see’ colour with their ears. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
64,840. My next wonder of the world is a bat’s ear or the bat’s echo-location system. Professor Richard Dawkins
64,841. Until quite recently scientists didn’t know how bats fly around in total darkness. Could they have paranormal extra-sensory perception? In the 1940s the American zoologist Donald Griffin demonstrated experimentally that bats use sonar – echo location – of their cries. Back then sonar was brand new military technology and the theory that it was natural to bats outraged some of Griffin’s colleagues. Richard Dawkins, Enemies of Reason
108,208. A bat is a superbly engineered night flying attack aircraft; it is the product of a long arms-race. (Evolution & Bats) Richard Dawkins, lecture Why Evolution? New College of the Humanities 18 November 2013
99,041. Flying Foxes – the largest bats on the planet ... eat almost exclusively fruit. (Papua New Guinea & Bats) Lost Land of the Volcano II
106,449. Bats are vital to life in the Yucatan keeping its insect population in check. (Mexico & Forest & Bats) Earth’s Festival of Life II: Forests of the Maya, BBC 2017
136,472. Summer 2019: The hidden world of one of Britain’s most endangered and least understood animals – bats. Bats are mammals like us. Yet they’re as alien as they could possibly be. They’re the only ones that can fly. They see the world using sound. And spend most of their life in total darkness. Inside the Bat Cave, BBC 2020, Lucy Cooke reporting
136,473. Bryanston in Dorset: home to one of the UK’s most important bat roosts: inside this old building is a colony of greater horseshoe bats, one of our rarest species. ibid.
136,474. Bryanston is one of only 35 Greater Horseshoe breeding colonies in the whole of Britain. But their range and their numbers have shrunk drastically compared to a century ago. ibid.
136,475. In cold conditions bats enter a state called torpor. Their body temperature drops and their vital systems slow down reducing their need for food … Bats are thought to have evolved in the tropics; to adapt to colder climate they hibernate often in extraordinary ways … In cities, bats can be even more ingenious. ibid.
136,476. They sometimes live as long as thirty years. ibid.
136,477. The Brazilian freestyle bat has been clocked at an astonishing 160 kilometres per hour. ibid.
136,478. The tendons in the bat’s claws make them clasp shut when bearing its body weight … even months at a time. ibid.