Researchers studying a species of bats in Panama found the creatures can vary their heart rates from more than 1,000 beats per minute (BPM) when flying to 200 BPM when resting.
“One moment they are a Mercedes tearing up the race track and chewing through fuel, the next they are a Mazda 3 going down the highway with maximum fuel economy,” Kyle Elliott, an ecophysiologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, told Science Magazine.
Elliott pointed out such differences in heart rate usually only occur over extended periods of time, such as when animals are hibernating.
But these bats—Uroderma bilobatum—demonstrated the ability to change their already slowed heart rates from about 300 BPM to about 200 BPM for six minutes at a time. By doing this several times per hour, the researchers said, the bats conserved 10 percent of their daily energy budget.
“This could be the difference between life and death over a season,” said Charles Bishop, a zoologist specializing in animal genetics at Bangor University in the United Kingdom.
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Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.