What is the behavioral adaptation of a bat when there is a shortage of food?

Answer 1

Bats are capable of some very interesting behaviors, so your question is really quite a broad one! There are several books written just on the behavior of bats, but I will attempt to give you a few short examples:

Feeding behavior and predator avoidance - nearly all bats (except vampire bats) catch their food by flying. Bats that eat insects want to be able to go out hunting when their food is most easily available (which is usually from midday onwards until dusk) but if they go out too early, while it's still light, they are easy targets for predators. So, they have to wait until the ambient light is low enough that they can hunt in peace.

Hibernation - bats, like a lot of small mammals that live outside the tropics, are capable of entering a state of suspended animation when food is scarce, to save energy they lowering their heartrate, breathing rate and body temperature and can remain motionless in caves and other undisturbed spots for months on end.

"flocking" behaviour - when bats leave their roost to go hunting at night they are very vulnerable, and many predators have learnt to wait outside the exit of these roosts and wait for them to fly out. If bats left one by one, then they would be easily picked off, so instead many bats leave in massive groups or "flocks", and much like zebra in the Serengeti find safety in numbers, so do bats!

[Note that behavioral adaptations are very different to physical adaptations (if we were talking about physical adaptations of bats we would talk about echolocation, their small eyes, their wings etc etc...) ]

Answer 2

Bats have very high energy requirements, not only are they a mammal and thus need to spend a lot of energy keeping warm, but they are a small mammal which means they have a very high rate of heat loss to the environment. When food is scarce, many bats do what a lot of small mammals do; they hibernate. Usually in caves or even in old, undisturbed buildings, they enter a state of physical "shut down"- slowing down their heart rate, cooling their body temperature, and remaining physically still for many months at a time (in temperature regions, this time tends to be over the winter, because that is when their food; insects, as at its scarcest).

Hibernation is a long process and they can be in it for months at a time, however some bat species are capable of short term hibernation if there is a patch of bad weather say, called "torpor" - this is when they basically go into a mini hibernation for an hour, or a day or so, a way of conserving energy and not wasting it flying around looking for food in bad weather (in the UK, lots of bats do this when it rains in the evening).

Answer 3

It can see its preys at night also it can do echolocation. They have sharp ears to listen also sharp eyes so that they can see at night.