Well, yes. So why care about the bats or anything else as in a century it'll all be cinder and ashes?
Maybe there's something to be said for just living.
This is where animals are impressive - and why I don't think that their lives are so miserably bleak. When shit isn't happening, they get on with being alive.
I've been reading about ravens and keas in Jennifer Ackerman's The Bird Way. These are especially playful birds and will often choose play rather than food. The ravens are hierarchical and neophobic - they like toys (and people) they know already; the keas are complete neophiles and seem to use play to settle tension, rather as bonobos use sex. They have a warbling call that means 'playtime!' and everyone starts playing. Reminded me of the rattle when CD and Droopy had a play-chase and I thought that maybe that call isn't just about mating?
Talking of CD, he will often leave Droopy and the Third with the food I have scattered and follow me around for... what? Maybe for 'better' food, but maybe for the stimulation of finding the hidden treat, turning over the pot or whatever.
The other day I threw him half of what was quite a large dog biscuit. He pecked at it, knowing it was food, but couldn't break it up. He flew up, right above me, I was looking up and dropped it - it was falling on me - but then he closed his wings, dropped like a hawk and caught it just before it hit me. This was THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING.
Then he dropped it on the ground a few times, flying down to see if it had broken. It had not. The ground was soggy and muddy.
The following morning, the Feisties were exceptionally feisty. There were more of them. But it was confusing, because they bled over into the Flying Two, the Fluffies and the New Two... It was all crow caws and diving and everyone was in a flap. A kind of semi-good-natured flap... like there were a load of annoying kids rather than a real threat.
I saw one bird fly up and hover above me and then fly higher and do the hawk dive thing - all aerobatics and physical play. I hadn't seen CD's noticeable wing-feather notch so I didn't think it was him... but then CD was next to me and I thought again. He seems to have taken to sort of hovering above me as he did it again later.
By the way, the dropping object and catching it is a combination of both physical and object play so classifies as complex play. Proving, if proof were needed that crows - or at least CD - are smart.
Oh, and apparently in keas, it is the juvenile males who are the innovators, so on that basis, if the point is true of corvids too, I think CD is indeed a juvenile male.
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