Unique bat is agile on forest floor

Press, 18 February 1989, Page 26

Unique bat is agile on forest floor

VANISHING r NATIVES

By

Andrew Jeffs

Lesser short-tailed bats are unique among the world’s bats because they are as agile on the ground as in the air. These bats fold up their wings and tuck them away in "pockets” to prevent them from being injured while they scurry through the forest in search of food.

They often scuttle through leaf litter on the forest floor while hunting for insects such as moths and beetles.

Lesser short-tailed bats are also agile tree climbers, gripping branches with their clawed thumbs and stout clawed hind feet. Up in the trees they look for fruit, nectar-filled flowers and young birds to devour. The same long claws are also used by the bats to burrow out roosting tunnels in large rotting trees; and in soft ground in caves.

It is in these roosts that lesser short-tailed bats hide away during the day, often in groups clustered together. Several hours after sunset they emerge from their roosts to begin feeding. Lesser short-tailed bats are the largest of the two types of bats still found in New Zealand. They grow up to seven centimetres long, with a wingspan five times their length. Lesser short-tailed bats are

also the rarest bat in New Zealand. Once found throughout most of the country, these creatures are now confined to parts of the North Island and the north of the South Island.

Their decline is thought to have resulted from their unusual ground feeding habit which has made them vulnerable to introduced ground-dwelling predators such as stoats, cats and rats.