The Smithsonian Bat People D r. Charles Handley, a curator of mammals at the Museum, has been observing bats for nearly 40 years. In 1975, he began a study of the bats on Panama's Barro Colorado Island, a field station of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Handley and Kalko say it's partly because bats have specialized diets.
Different species eat insects, blood, small vertebrates, fruits, or nectar and pollen.
Big bats eat large fruit, little bats the smaller fruit. One species sniffs out figs beneath leaves, while another uses high-frequency sound waves, or echolocation, to detect fruit dangling in the open.