In honor of Halloween this month, Quest offers up a short story on bats. But these are not your screeching, swarming, bloodsucking Hollywood movie bats. No… just like you can choose to make a cute, happy jack-o-lantern or a scary jack-o-lantern, you can also choose to do a story about cute fruit-eating bats instead of their less attractive cousins.

So we visited zookeeper Andrea Dougall at the Oakland Zoo to learn about their Malayan and Island Flying Fox. Both are a type of fruit bat, and I couldn’t readily see the difference between them. There are many fascinating things that Andrea taught us about these bats that we couldn't fit into our two minute segment (and honestly, this producer wouldn't mind making a half hour special on these critters!). For instance, they have a lot of blood vessels in their wing tissue, so they make excellent thermo-regulators. If the bat is cold, he wraps himself up in his wings so that the heat from his blood vessels can keep him warm. Likewise, when it's hot out the bats flap their wings to cool off.

When Andrea told us that bats are the only mammals that can have sustained flight by flapping their wings, someone said "but what about the flying squirrel?" Nope– they glide.

These bats don't actually swallow the fruit that they eat, instead they chew it into small pieces, push it up against the roof of their mouth to ring out the juice, which they then swallow, and spit out the leftovers. This is something that Andrea reminded me of when I told her I'd like to take one of these cute critters home as a pet… the amount of rotten fruit pulp that you have to pick up is really unappealing. Plus, of course, it would be illegal.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing to me is the simple fact that these animals spend all of their time hanging upside down. I asked Andrea about that too– how is it possible that they wouldn't experience some sort of leg fatigue and let go of their grip? She told me what's in the scientific literature on other kinds of bats (and we're assuming it applies to fruit bats as well). The deal is that the tendon of the muscle that flexes the claw passes through a tough sheath that consists of 19-50 rings, oriented at an angle so that the inside surface is ridged. So there's some ratchet-action going on in the sheath that holds the claw in a grasping position even after the muscle has relaxed, and it's the tension on that tendon from the body weight that holds the ratchet in place. When the bat wants to move, the tension is released and therefore the claw releases its hold. So basically, the clenched position is the "at rest" position, and the releasing of the foot is the part that takes energy.

If you haven't yet, I highly suggest you make a trip over to the Oakland Zoo to see these highly captivating animals for yourself.

Watch the Cool Critters: Fruit Bats television story report online. Also, if you’d like to see close-up photos of these bats, please visit our photo set over on Flickr.

Look! Up in the night sky! It's a bird! It's a bloodsucker! No, it is a beneficial friend, the bat!

Bats have been around for about 50 million years and are among the earth's oldest animals: they also are some of the most misunderstood. Because they are nocturnal and strange looking, people have associated bats with evil things for centuries. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, bats play a very important role in the economic and environmental health of the world.

In rain forests and deserts, bats are some of the most important pollinators of plants. Without bat pollinators, the wild varieties of many foods we eat: avocados, bananas, cashews, mangoes and peaches couldn't grow.

Fruit eating bats spread seeds as they fly and digest. As natural insect controls, they can't be beat. One bat can eat up to 600 mosquitoes in one hour!

There are nearly 1000 species of bats worldwide, most of which live in tropical regions, like our very own Flying Foxes at The Oakland Zoo. Forty three species live in the US. In fact, almost a quarter of the world's mammals are bats! Bats are the only mammal that can fly and are in a special order called Chiroptera, which means "Hand wing." Bat wings are actually membranes of skin that stretch between their hands and legs. Bats give birth to helpless young and are breast fed milk by their mothers.

The nine Bay Area counties are a veritable haven for bats. To join the ranks of bat-watchers, head to a favorite outdoor spot at sunset anytime between May and October. Visit Sunol Regional Wilderness, Tilden Regional Park, or Foothills Open Space Preserve. Stroll the campuses at Berkeley or Stanford, or the beach at Bolinas, Pescadero, or Fort Funston. Sit beside one of the lakes in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park or find an open spot in downtown Martinez. The shadows you see in flight may be any of 14 species found in the Bay Area–from the ubiquitous little brown, big brown, or Mexican free-tailed bats, to the diminutive western pipistrelles and sparrow-sized hoary bats.

Over the past 150 years, as development has altered the California landscape, bats have faced the loss of roosting sites and the destruction of woodlands and waterways where they feed. Like birds, bats have been devastated by the use of pesticides that kill off their prey, contaminate water sources, and accumulate in their body tissues. Our beneficial friends are in trouble! You can help California bats by putting up bat houses, or joining a conservation group like Bat Conservation International www.batcon.org.

Check out http://flyingfur.typepad.com for more bat blogging.

*Editor's note: This is not to be confused with "Bay Area Bites," KQED's award-winning food and wine blog, which is going strong.

Amy Gotliffe is Conservation Manager at The Oakland Zoo.

latitude: 37.7502, longitude: -122.148