Bats hum for sugar too.Researchers report for the first time that some nectar-feeding bats metabolize me·tab·o·lize v. 1. To subject to metabolism. 2. To produce by metabolism. 3. To undergo change by metabolism. metabolize to subject to or be transformed by metabolism. sugar at the same frantic rate as hummingbirds This is a complete list of hummingbirds in alphabetical order, sortable by common or binomial name. For hummingbirds in taxonomic order, see list of hummingbirds in taxonomic order Name binomial Allen's Hummingbird Selasphorus sasin Amazilia Hummingbird do. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Like hummingbirds, South American long-tongued bats (Glossophaga soricina) hover at flowers and feed on sugar-rich nectar. While other mammals, including people, convert sugars to glycogen glycogen (glī`kəjən), starchlike polysaccharide (see carbohydrate) that is found in the liver and muscles of humans and the higher animals and in the cells of the lower animals. and store it in body tissues for later use, the bats extract energy immediately from almost all the sugars. This "little metabolic trick" says coauthor John Speakman of the University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen is an ancient university founded in 1495, in Old Aberdeen, Scotland and a world-renowned centre for teaching and research. It is the fifth oldest university in the United Kingdom and the wider English-speaking world. in Scotland, was previously seen only in birds, such as the hummingbird, and not mammals. In their tests, the researchers kept bats on a normal diet of nectar, which contains several sugars, but then abruptly switched to a dose of pure sucrose, fructose fructose (frŭk`tōs), levulose (lĕv`yəlōs'), or fruit sugar, simple sugar found in honey and in the fruit and other parts of plants. , or glucose. By measuring sugar-breakdown products in the animals' breath, the team determined what percentage of exhaled molecules were from the old diet and what fraction came from the sugar that the bats had just consumed. The results indicated that the mammals began obtaining energy from the pure sugars within minutes of eating them. In a separate experiment, the team found that a long-tongued bat burns almost 60 percent of its energy reserves each day. If the bat can't replenish that store, it will have "a window of a couple of days" before it dies of starvation, Speakman says. "It shows how dependent these animals are on the stability of their environment." The findings appear online and in an upcoming Functional Ecology Functional ecology is the branch of ecology that focuses on the roles, or functions, that species play in the community or ecosystem in which they occur. In this approach, physiological, anatomical, and life history characteristics of the species are emphasized. . |
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