Talk:Mexican free-tailed bat

File:Flying Tadarida brasiliensis in Texas.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

 * If the bot owner is reading this-- The deletion was speedy alright; too bad the removal of the image from all pages it's included on wasn't done appropriately. When you delete an image, remove all references to it, as well. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 14:46, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Bacardi logo origin
There is an unsourced statement about the origin of the Bacardi logo which I flagged as dubious. A recent history of the Bacardi franchise (ISBN 067001978X) describes a different origin for that logo. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 17:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Austonian Bridge Bat
Multiple sites and sources list this and its become a common name here in Austin. I'm redoing the edit and going to keep doing so because its become a common colloquialism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.97.110.60 (talk) 15:39, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * A colloquialism does not a name make. You have not presented any reliable sources (see WP:RS), the colloquialism does not belong. Presumably the term is used in Austin by some people, I haven't seen it elsewhere in any animal nomenclature. Do not edit war (see WP:3RR), this term does not belong in the lede of the article. If you do find reliable sources, it might belong somewhere in the body of the article, but not in the first line. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 18:26, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Then should I remove the Brazilian free-tailed bat too? There's no sources for that at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.174.98.84 (talk) 22:58, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * For reliable sources, try National Science Research Laboratory at Texas Tech, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, IUCN Red List. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 03:05, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * As for "Austonian bridge bat", beyond blogs and articles which are a copy of a stale Wikipedia article, I can only find a couple of passing references - none of them substantiated or referenced. At least one of them I suspect originated from someone reading this article. Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 04:55, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Behaviour/Speed
This paper http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/11/160398 describes the methodology used to measure speed, which included wind measurement etc. The criticism seems exaggerated. The measurement of high speeds seems pretty sound, and wind speed was definitely measured, even if the technique wouldn't pass scrutiny for an aviation record. Instead of "That measurement does not separate any contribution from wind speed, so the observations could have been caused by strong tailwinds, and the bat's maximum air speed remains unknown." it might be better to have something like "The measurement methodology did not simultaneously record wind speed and ground speed, so the bat's precise maximum air speed could not be accurately measured". One of the most interesting aspects of the research was that ground speed appeared to be consistent irrespective of headwind or tailwind. To extract from the paper "The response of bats to winds (figure 3a), and the lack of an association between ground speeds and the directions of prevailing winds (figure 3b) suggest that tailwinds do not account for the fast ground speeds that we document. However, within the spatial and temporal resolution of our wind analyses, we cannot rule out the possibility that fast ground speeds were assisted by fluctuating local wind gusts, perhaps enhanced by the hilly terrain" 212.159.44.170 (talk) 19:38, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Tweaked. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:09, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Let's re-visit this. The claim of 160 kph is dubious. The two relevant quotes from the article:
 * In the 1950s, flight speeds for T. brasiliensis were estimated from a helicopter to exceed 18 m/s, and observations from the ground estimated maximum flight speeds of at least 26.8 m/s. Although never replicated, these observations remain the fastest estimated horizontal flight for a bat.

There are two key points in the above paragraph. Estimated and never replicated. Note that the quote there is 26.8 m/s. The next relevant quote:
 * The distribution of ground speeds was highly skewed (figure 2a), with medians for individual bats ranging from 3.7 to 14.3 m/s, and an overall median ground speed for the seven bats of 5.7 m/s. However, all bats achieved ground speeds above 25 m/s, and five of the seven bats achieved ground speeds above 30 m/s (table 1). After culling one apparent outlier of 60.1 m/s that was more than 15 m/s above the next fastest speed of 44.5 m/s, [...] 

There are several relevant points about this quote. The speeds are radar speeds, so not controlled for air speed. They comment later on that they looked at the weather for a nearby station, and did not see extreme wind speeds there. That's not the same as ruling out tailwinds or vortices, so I'd regard these maximum measurements as dubious. These speeds were also not necessarily level flight speeds, since the bats were not under observation at the time - if they fly at 1 km altitude, there's a lot of height-to-speed tradeoff available to them.

The last speed quoted (44.5 m/s is undoubtedly where the claim of 160 kph comes from. If we're going to quote this article (and in particular in the lede), we should use the number that is used in the article, with the translation only in parenthesis. Tarl N.  ( discuss ) 17:00, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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