Re: Why do bats hang upside down?

It is true that bats are unique as they live hanging upside down. Bats are nocturnal animals. They go in search of food during the night time. Their night time activity protects them from many of the day active predators. In the night, bats have to protect themselves only from a limited number of night active predators (like owls and night jars). The food resources for them are limited. From what ever little food they get they have to efficiently budget their total energy for maintaining their basal metabolism, flying, reprodution etc. Birds being powerful fliers, have well developed chest and wing muscles and spend more energy to take off from the ground - against the gravitational pull. Bats avoid spending most of their energy for the taking off by hanging upside down in high raised ceilings. As they drop down from the ceiling they start flying. This could be an "intelligent" adaptive strategy to conserve energy. Instead of taking off from the ground level (which needs lots of energy to lift the body against the gravity) "evolution" has tried a different strategy in bats - to live hanging upside down (to conserve energy)!