How to drink like a bat
This one just sticks out its tongue and throbs carry nectar to its mouth
By Susan Milius
Sorry, English language, but “tongue pump” or even “conveyor belt” may turn into a verb for drinking.
Some very patient biologists have observed tropical bats drinking nectar in a way never documented before. Finding a term for this feeding is a challenge.
“Odd” is what Mirjam Knörnschild called it when she saw an orange nectar-feeding bat (Lonchophylla robusta) extend its tongue to drink. The bat didn’t lick, lap, sip, slurp or even take its tongue out of the liquid. Along a deep groove on each side, edges undulated as if the tongue clenched in waves like the human intestine. Nectar just slid up the grooves. “It was like a conveyor belt,” says Knörnschild, now of Free University of Berlin.