Bats Are More Closely Related to Whales Than to Birds

Bats and birds both soar through the skies, but that’s about where the similarities end between these two creatures. In reality, bats are far more closely related to an animal that lives in an entirely different environment and couldn’t seem more different: whales.

Bats and whales are both mammals, but they share several traits beyond that. They’re both warm-blooded, have hair, give birth to live young, and nurse their offspring with milk. Birds, on the other hand, are dissimilar to bats in many ways. They’re avians rather than mammals, they have feathers instead of hair, they lay eggs, and they feed their young with partially digested insects rather than milk (which birds don’t produce).