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Question: Why don’t the muscles in a bat’s legs get tired from hanging on to its perch while it sleeps?
Answer: The bat doesn’t actually exert any energy to grip its perch. Its claws are designed so that they normally clench, and the weight of the bat’s body pulls on tendons to keep them closed. The bat uses muscles only to open its claws to release its perch. And why do they hang upside down? To give themselves an easy takeoff for flight. A bat’s legs are small and weak, so the bat cannot run to give itself enough speed to take flight, and its wings are not powerful enough to launch it into the air from the ground. The bat must climb to a high spot and then fall into flight. By hanging upside down, the bat is ready to take off in an instant.
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