Record-breaking bats can fly as fast as 99 mph, study says
Record-breaking bats can fly as fast as 99 mph, study says
Brazilian free-tailed bats don’t need a Batplane: they can wing it at speeds as fast as about 99 mph, researchers have discovered.
In fact, that’s a new record for horizontal flight speed for any bird or bat, scientists said on Wednesday. In the realm of the birds, while swifts can fly at horizontal speeds of over 62 miles per hour, these bats are faster. (Remarkably, peregrine falcons can exceed 180 mph when diving, but that’s not horizontal flight.) The scientists caught bats as they emerged from a bat cave in Texas and then measured their speeds from the air, using antennas mounted on the struts of an airborne Cessna. Their fastest measurement from a bat was about 99.5 mph.
