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There is really little reason to touch a baby bird, but if you do the parents will not abandon it just because you did. If you see a little bird without feathers on the ground, look for the parents nearby. If there are no adult birds nearby and the bird really appears unable to take care of itself, look for a nest on the gound or in a tree/rafter closeby. If there is a nest that seems like it could be where the bird came from, you can pick up the bird and put it in there. If not, it's probably best to just leave the bird alone. The parents might be nearby, hiding or feeding. Unless the bird is in obvious danger, removing the bird could be worse than just leaving Nature to take care of itself.
This myth probably originated with the fact that animals will sometimes abandon their babies if the scent on them is not that of the parents. However most birds only have a very rudimentary sense of smell (the Turkey Vulture is an exception) and they will not especially be able to tell if the scent on their babies is altered. If the parents see you they may fly away temporarily, either to lure you from their nest (as the Killdeer does with all potential threats,) or because they are simply afraid. Yet, they probably have all intentions of returning. (Think of all the time they have invested in courtship, nest building, egg laying and hatching, feeding and raising their young! They are not about to just pick up and leave.)
Bats are not blind. In fact, many have very good eyesight. Most bats are known
for their exceptionally advanced echolocation, which they use like eyesight to direct
themselves in their nightly escapades. However, none are blind.
Opossums do have prehensile tails, which means that they are capable of curling them
around objects, like a long finger or an extra arm is able to. (Monkeys have
prehensile tails also.) They do use these tails for holding onto branches and
maintaing balance while climbing, but they do not hang unpside-down like in all
the cartoons.
First of all, bats are not interested in your head at all. Secondly, bats' navigational
systems are so awesomely advanced that the chance that they will get caught in your
hair is fantastically amazingly small.
This story was probably some frightened superstitious person's "explanation" to why
bats swoop around, sometimes near to your head. It's not because the bats
care about your hair or are in any way interested in it. (Unless maybe if you're
in the tropics and you're using some kind of papaya shampoo and a [freak of
Nature] blind and starving fruit bat thinks that you are a giant melon.)
The actual reason bats are swooping around above your head is because they are feeding.
Many bats eat insects, and bats catch this food on the wing. As you walk you
stir up insects from the ground, which then try to get away and end up in a bat's
stomach. Bats just cleverly hang out around us humans, waiting for us to flush out
their dinner.
The quills of a porcupine become embedded in a victim when the 'victim' instigates an
altercation with the porcupine and actually touches the porqupine. The porcupine's
quills are specially designed so that they will pull out from the porcupine's body
with relatively little discomfort and will stick into the body of the intruder with
maximum discomfort.
The quills are somewhat like the barbs on fishing hooks; they are much harder to
get out of someone's skin than it is to get them in. Additionally unfortunate for
whomever is attacking the porcupine is that the quills actually become more deeply
embedded into the muscle tissue as the surrounding muscle contracts and expands
with normal movements.