Taxon Description (Wikipedia)
Bats are flying mammals in the order
Chiroptera . The forelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, glide rather than fly, and can only glide for short distances. Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but instead flap their spread out digits,
[ ] which are very long and covered with a thin membrane or patagium.
Chiroptera comes from two Greek words,
cheir (χείρ) "hand" and
pteron (πτερόν) "wing."
There are about 1,100 bat species worldwide, which represent about twenty percent of all classified mammal species.
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