{"id":192216,"date":"2024-12-10T12:08:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/10\/putting-vampire-bats-on-treadmills-revealed-an-energy-burning-quirk\/"},"modified":"2024-12-10T12:08:21","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:08:21","slug":"putting-vampire-bats-on-treadmills-revealed-an-energy-burning-quirk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/10\/putting-vampire-bats-on-treadmills-revealed-an-energy-burning-quirk\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting vampire bats on treadmills revealed an energy-burning quirk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Putting<\/div>\n

Vampire bats live on a strictly blood-based diet. So strict, in fact, that they seem to process their food<\/a> more like some blood-feeding flies than like other known mammals.<\/p>\n

Researchers discovered this by coaxing common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus<\/em>) to run on a tiny treadmill. Running isn\u2019t that unusual for these bats in the wild. When they\u2019re not flying around, they\u2019re often found scurrying along the ground after cattle, horses and other mammals to feed from.<\/p>\n

While bats in this experiment hit the mini gym, scientists tracked the carbon dioxide they exhaled. Up to 60 percent of that CO2<\/sub> came from the bats metabolizing fuel other than carbs or fats<\/a>. That was surprising, since those are the fuels that typically power running mammals.<\/p>\n

Instead, much of the energy bats were using came from a recent high-protein meal of cow blood. The gases they exhaled during their workouts contained telltale traces from amino acids<\/a>. Those are the building blocks of proteins.<\/p>\n

Another clue to the fuel a runner is using is the ratio of CO2<\/sub> exhaled to oxygen used. This ratio stayed steady as researchers pushed the treadmill pace from walking to running. That steadiness is a sign that bats weren\u2019t fueling their exercise the usual mammal way. Gas ratios typically change as exercise gets harder and mammals shift from burning mostly fats to relying more on carbs.<\/p>\n

Researchers shared these findings November 6 in Biology Letters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>
Researchers put vampire bats through their paces on a mini treadmill to discover what fuels their metabolism.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Running on blood<\/h2>\n

The discovery means the vampire bats power along much like blood-feeding tsetse flies or some mosquitoes. That\u2019s a first for mammals, thinks Ken Welch. He\u2019s an ecological physiologist at the University of Toronto in Canada. He did the experiments along with Giulia Rossi. This physiologist now works at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.<\/p>\n

The basic chemistry of bats\u2019 blood-based power isn\u2019t that unusual. \u201cIn most of us mammals,\u201d Welch says, we can break down amino acids for fuel or some other use. But those processes are \u201cbuilt to slowly churn along in the background.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hibernating bears, for instance, might use this fuel source. \u201cBut these are extreme examples,\u201d Welch says. And even then, bears \u201care not<\/em> using amino acids they ingested in a meal only minutes before.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Vampire bats\u2019 blood diet seems fairly poor in the kinds of nutrients that let most mammals build up their stores of fuels such as fats. So it makes sense to Welch that bats\u2019 ability to use those fuels weakened over time.<\/p>\n

Yet relying so much on amino acids has its downsides. These fuels aren\u2019t as easy to access quickly. And that means the bats could be more vulnerable to starvation. These vampires get thirsty often.<\/p>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vampire bats live on a strictly blood-based diet. So strict, in fact, that they seem to process their food more like some blood-feeding flies than like other known mammals. Researchers discovered this by coaxing common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) to run on a tiny treadmill. Running isn\u2019t that unusual for these bats in the wild. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/110524-sm-bat-metabolism-feat.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[16042,150622,3225,131032,1978,33414,49854],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192218,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192216\/revisions\/192218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}