Group of bats hanging from the ceiling of a cave, in Delhi

From the archive record

Bats in an old monument in Khirkee village, New Delhi. 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 a short distance. 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 hand and pteron wing. There are about 1,240 bat species worldwide, which represent about twenty percent of all classified mammal species. This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock foot