coordination: counterpart?

Hi,

I'm wondering if there's a grammatic or syntactic term ( or just speech part?!) named for the part "feed" (as opposed to "fly") in the sentence below? Counterpart? phrasal verb?

Or is it just simply two sentences connected by "and" with the second sentence omitting the subject and modal verb? <<< Yes. That's how I would express it.

If you want to look only at the word 'feed', it's a past participle. You could also consider it as simple past tense (ie  Bats can fly and (bats) feed in the dark), but joining two different tenses by 'and' like this is not usually advisable. 

Best wishes, Clive

 [Bats can] fly and feed [in the dark].

The material in brackets is shared between two sentences:

Bats can fly in the dark (and) bats can feed in the dark.

fly and feed are verbs, if you want the part of speech involved here.

CJ 

Is it pointing out a special skill of the bats - feeding while flying in the dark?  Birds can catch the prey in the air but can't eat while flying.  I am not sure if bats can actually eat their preys right after catching them when they are still flying, but the sentence gives me this impression.  If this is the case, the sentence is not a simple joining up of two sentences with independent meanings. Do you think so?

What I mean is that the following are not the same:

1a. Bats can fly in the dark.    PLUS

1b. Bats can feed in the dark.

 

2. Bats can fly and feed in the dark.

"fly and feed" go together to convey the meaning that bats can feed "on the fly" (sorry, I couldn't help it, "on the fly" isn't exactly appropriate here, but it sounds cool by using it literally in this case).  Just like bread and butter, or a black and white dress.  You don't have a black dress and a white dress, but a black and white dress.  I guess that might be the reason why the OP asked this question.  But, oh yes, I think I am digging too deep.  There is probably no special term for describing this.