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A bat in the hand is worth...A little brown bat and a University of California graduate student.
A little brown bat is released by a University of California, Santa Cruz, graduate student. There are more than 1,000 bat species with varied wing spans, weights and facial features. Bats account for about 20 percent of all mammalian species.
Credit: Kate Langwig
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Related story: The Night Life: Why We Need Bats All the Time--Not Just on Halloween