Featured Creature

There's a new blog in town that you need to check out. It's called The Featured Creature, and it's something you'll want to visit daily. Carly's idea for the blog is simple but brilliant -- feature a new creature every day. You'll find plenty of ugly, like the bat photos below, but fair warning: you'll also find some really pretty animals like peacock butterflies and pheasants.

The photos you see below belong to free-tail bats, aka mastiff bats. Free-tails (so named for their unusually long, rodent-like tails) are a large family bats, consisting of robust, large, incredibly nimble fliers who are also some of the fastest out there. Some live in small groups in the hollows of trees, while others live in cave complexes in colonies with millions of individuals. I can't imagine the enormous piles of guano that must accumulate in those caves, nor the cockroaches that must feast upon them. Neither do I want to consider my own death in said pile...but I just did.

Photo credit (1 - saguaro-juniper.com, 2 - hsu.edu)