A walking bat in New Zealand took its marching orders from an ancestor, a new fossil-bat discovery reveals.

Scientists had long thought that the lesser short-tailed bat evolved its walking preference independently.

Since the bat's native habitat lacks predators, researchers reasoned thatimuch like flightless birds on isolated islands-the bat had adapted to its safer surroundings in part by walking.

But the discovery of fossils of a now extinct walking bat in northwestern Queensland, Australia, suggests that the modern-day bats descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives.
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