Bats' built-in air conditioning

摘要

Plenty of biologists have handled Brazilian free-tailed bats, but none had noticed a feature now revealed by thermal imagery: a heat-radiating stripe on each wing. In images of zones of body heat, these bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) look as if they're wearing pale suspenders. After images revealed where to look, Jonathan Reichard of Boston University spotted a narrow, ladderlike array of blood vessels running along the wings of live bats swooping into a roost in Texas.