Lots of mammals can glide - flying squirrels stretch out skin flaps and parachute between trees - but only bats truly fly, flapping their wings to take off and steer in any direction.
A bat’s wing is basically a hand with very, very long fingers. The four “fingers” stretch out and a thin layer of skin runs between them like webbing. That’s why bats look kind of like flying umbrellas; they’re folding and unfolding their hands every time they flap.
Most bats hunt at night, in pitch darkness. They do it by shouting - sending out high-pitched clicks too high for human ears, then listening to the echoes bouncing back. The shape and speed of the echoes tells them where every moth and tree branch is. That’s called echolocation, and it’s so accurate that a bat can catch a single mosquito in mid-air without ever seeing it.
