How horseshoe bats and ordinary bats differ.

There are nineteen families of bats throughout the world, comprising nine hundred and fifty different species. Only two of the families are found in Britain, the rhinolophidae, or horseshoe bats, and the vespertilionidae, or ordinary bats. There are two British species of horseshoe bats and sixteen different species of ordinary bats. Many people dislike bats, but they are harrmless and very interesting creatures. They are the only mammals capable of flying long distances, using a modified form of the limbs common to all mammals. Scientists classify bats as the order chiroptera, which means hand-wing. Bats do not walk far and have poorly developed hind limbs. When flying fast and in the dark, bats can still avoid obstacles and track down prey by means of elaborate echo- location systems similar to the radar scanning equipment used by shops and aircraft. Bats normally hunt at night, but if we have lots of heavy rain they be seen in the daytime, which is very dangerous as raptors will predate them. The two British bat families have different echo- location systems. Horseshoe bats emit sound through their nostrils and it is focuse into a narrow beam by a fleshy, cone shaped trumpet on the snout. The bat moves its head from side to side to scan what is ahead of it. Ordinary bats emit sound through the mouth, and have in each ear a fleshy spike known as a tragus, which is part of their sound reception system. All British bats eat insects, and as these are scarce in winter the bats hibernate during the colder months. British bats will have summer and winter roosts, female bats will also have maternity roosts. Many bats make seasonal migrations to hibernating places, and some foreign bats turn up on north sea oil platforms or ships, having been blown of course.