Biodiversity: How Bats Fly

My brain goes on tangents, sometimes, and instead of working this morning, I spent the better part of three hours studying bat muscles, so you guys are going to get the summation of what I learned here, with some comparisons and contrasts to avian flight, because it's interesting, to say the least.

If you don't know if you think bats are cool, let me just drop these facts on you:

A colony of 500 bats could eat over a quarter of a million mosquitoes per hour (of course this number is smaller in reality because bats also eat beetles, wasps, moths, and other pesky insects)
Bats have a talent for pollinating plants and dispersing seeds (bat poop is excellent fertilizer with fungicidal and nematocidal properties), promoting biodiversity and getting that backyard of yours looking flowery and beautiful
Less than 0.5% of all bats test positive for rabies, so they aren't as dangerous as you think they are

Bats vs. Birds

Birds have less joints in their wings than bats, which makes their wings more rigid (bats actually have a couple more joints than the joints present in human hands, allowing them precision control over the shape of the wing)
Bird wings are more efficient at providing lift, but bat wings are more maneuverable (bats can move and hover in all directions, while birds are more limited)
Bats can move the wing like a hand, making the motion of the wing more like swimming/rowing in the air, as opposed to the avian flapping motion

Anatomy of a Bat Wing

Bats have a thin membrane of skin (pantagium) between hand and body, and between each finger bone
The thumb extends out of the wing as a small claw which is used for climbing
Bats have 12-20% of their entire body weight in each one of their wings, so they maneuver using inertia (they need to be able to react against their own weight)
Each wing has long muscles embedded in the skin, front to back, which aren't attached to any bones and help shape the wings in flight. They are called plagiopatagiales proprii.

Bat Flight

Takeoff

Bats usually prefer to fall into flight from a high location (having used their thumbs to climb to said location)
They can takeoff from the ground when forced due to extra elastic biceps and triceps tendons

Downstroke

Muscles contract (Pectoralis major, Subscapularis, Serraturs anterior (partial), and Deltoid (partial))
Plagiopatagiales muscles tense to make the skin stretch less
Membrane (pantagium) curves allowing for greater lift using less energy than a bird would expend

Upstroke