Why Don’t Sleeping Bats Fall Down?

Bats sleep upside down, so how come they don’t fall? Turns out that they’ve got some unusual legs.

Hosted by: Michael Aranda
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Sources:
Flying foxes tendon locking mechanism: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1993.tb02633.x/abstract

Bat tendon locking mechanism paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8515478

Review paper on grasping in tetrapods: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12010/epdf

Vampire bats don’t have a “passive digital lock” (could not access full article but this was stated in abstract): http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/147544

Vampire bats “strike their victims from the ground”: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/common-vampire-bat/

Vampire bats have stronger legs / are faster on the ground http://mentalfloss.com/article/53128/11-bloody-facts-about-vampire-bats