43 thoughts on “Agile cat and captured bat”

    2. I was going to ask what you found revolting about a felid displaying excellent timing and physical prowess, behaving in a way that has evolved over many years, aiding its species very survival, but then I realized that an *eye roll* is probably a sufficient response to your unfollowing an interesting blog because of one post you don’t like.

      Buh-bye now.

      1. well, really now…

        you are one of the certified morons who thinks that watching a cat’s well honed skills is comparable to a cheetah exercising its evolutionary heritage.

        it’s not, you silly fool…

        (domestic) cats killing wildlife is an entirely human phenomenon and human’s destruction of nature is despicable and more so by cat-proxy.

        you are a horrible person by default.

        1. You are not allowed to call any other commenter a “certified moron” or “horrible person.” Either apologize immediately or you’ll never post here again.

          Regardless of how you feel about this video, you don’t have a right on this website to insult other commenters.

        1. There are some diseases one assumes the worst of. Rabies is one; assume it can be transmitted to Mr. Cat simply biting Mr. Bat.

          And keep Mr. Cat under quarantine for however long is recommended.

          Isn’t rabies a disease from which no one has ever recovered once symptoms emerge?

    1. The trajectory of the incoming bat does look funny, it looks as if someone threw it. And the bat may not even be real, or at least not alive when thrown: I am no expert in dying critters, but wouldn’t we expect some twitching or spasm in the bat, even if instantly killed?

      That said, I am rather impressed by the cat’s agility.

      1. Notice how the cat is tracking the “bat” before we see it enter the frame. Even that is hard to view as evidence, as a human could be waving it around. But for me, there is just no way to tell whether it is real or not. The rubber bats I have seen for sale, however, generally are pretty floppy. If it were one of those, I would have expected to see the wings flap around a bit after the cat caught it.

  6. I guess I’m just weird, but I keep wondering what’s up with the tripod and the bag hanging from it?

    Cool cat, poor bat.

    One of my cats made a similar move the other day when a bird flew past the door. I was surprised at how high could go. This cat no longer goes outside, he has been retired.

    1. The tripod is a heavy-duty studio photo flash stand and the bag is a sandbag to prevent it from tipping.

      See here:

      http://www.paulcbuff.com/ls3900.php

      for a comparable stand, and look at the rest of that site for the type of things that go on top of one.

      And, people…the bat is a plastic toy — just look at the way that the wings remain stiffly pointed in opposite directions. Not even dead flesh fails to move like that — and a living-but-stunned bat wouldn’t be holding its wings like that.

      b&

      1. Yeah it looked fake to me too – especially how the bat was flying to begin with.

      2. It may not be a toy. Bats fly down my chimney and around my house a lot, and I’ve had a lot of opportunities to observe them.

        When bats are caught in mid-flight, or even tapped gently with a pillow (that’s how I catch them), they fall down to the ground and pretend to be dead. They hold themselves completely still and stiff, just like that one is doing.

        That enables one to put the bristles on a broom gently on top of them, and slide a dustpan under them, then take the apparatus outside and toss them into the air. They fly off like, well, a bat out of hell.

        So the strange bat trajectory may also be real.

        And, as I say, that’s just what they do when my cats catch them on the fly. But the cats always let them go, so they can catch them again.

        1. If real it seems set up….the person just happened to have the camera on the cat at just that time? Hmmmm….if a real bat that wasn’t very nice to do that to the poor thing.

          1. Yeah, the bat seems to have been thrown. But, they’ve never seemed to mind that, they do just fly away. Also, the cat might not have killed it (yet), mine never did. If not, I hope the person took it away from the cat and tossed it into the air outside.

          2. I also hope the bat bit him a little for throwing him 🙂 I caught a cute little brown bat once who got inside & let him go. I had wanted to get his picture but he just circled around on my deck & flew off to the highest trees before I had the chance. He really did seem so helpless when I had him caught…you’d have to put your finger right in his open mouth for him to bite you.

          3. Glad to hear you’re a bat rescuer! 🙂

            IME, though, once a cat has caught something, even if the prey animal looks fine, it is most likely to succumb soon to infection from the puncture bite of the cat. It’s sad.

          4. Suspect multiple tripods & cameras set up to cover the expected route & position of the bat&cat. We just watch from the one that turned out to be in the right place.

          5. On re-looking, never mind – our view is surely hand-held. But the whole thing seems a setup.

      3. No it’s not, if you look at the stills you can see its wings are flapping, frames 22 to 26 are quite clear in that regard.

      4. I agree. That would have to be the most perfect death-blow of all time for the bat to be completely immobile upon the cat’s landing. I’m guessing it’s rigged.

        1. Tou are wrong, watch frame after frame, the bat flaps its wings, it’s a live flying bat. The bat is probably killed after the cat gets it to ground, around frame 70.

          1. If you go to youtube, the comment says the cat ate the bat up (poor bat)

  7. And now, instead of a pair of silk moth wings laying on the ground where a bat ate – you’ll see a pair of bat wings on the ground where a cat ate. No one likes wings except red necked human boys in sports bars.

  10. When I was young, my cat used to bring me bat heads every so often. I always wondered how he managed to catch them.

  11. My cats used to do that, with free-flying bats. I never saw them miss once.

    And they always released the bat alive, so that we could play more. So, maybe this one survived.

  12. So we should stop blaming wind turbines for bat deaths and blame the cats!

    1. I’ve often wondered why wind turbine blades couldn’t have hypersonic whistles at the blade tips to warn birds & bats out of the way. Has anyone tried this?

      1. My son’s an engineering student; his answer:

        Not sure, seems a sensible thing to do. I suppose partly because it would harm – although probably not by much – the aerodynamic properties of the blades. You’d lose power, and because you’d get such relatively high drag at the tips would create a high force concentration on something that’s already threatening to tear apart. Might also impair the stealth properties of the turbine.

        A better option would be to probably just stick a whistle on top of the nacelle.

        /@

    2. Now I don’t know what to do – I like wind turbines, cats & bats!! Moral dilemma. 🙂

  13. From youtube, this person claims the original and the one posted by Matthew is a gif animation of the rotated version.

    Yes, I recorded the original video that has been seen in many places. That tripod looking thing the cats lands on was my video lights that were setup to help in the recording of my water fast……

    I had seen the cat catch a bat (and eat it) the night before. That night, I setup the lights and tried to record the action. I have lots of video of the cat trying… then we both gave up. Minutes later, the cat moved behind the lights and started trying again… this time, we both got our shot 🙂

  14. Well, that goes quite a ways towards explaining how my own moggies have been gathering some of the airborne prey they’ve been bringing home. We have been playing “catch” with them from time to time, but I’ve never seen this sort of felid acrobatics demonstrated before.

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