Which species of bat?
Good day,
In November 2015 we went to Namibia. In Etosha National Park we could take a picture of a bat, hanging in a tree. We are not experts in bats but we think this might be a Schlieffen’s Twilight Bat. Can someone help us to identify this species of bat?
Thank you
Kind regards
Jean-Philippe
Belgium
4 Comments
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vnsankar
I also think it looks like a Hipposideros. Hipposideros taxonomy was reworked a few years back, so now Commerson’s is endemic to Madagascar. The possible candidates for Etosha would be H. caffer and H. vittatus. Perhaps it is H. vittatus (doesn’t look like H. caffer to me).
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Jon Hall
Yes pretty sure its H vittatus (Still known as Commerson’s Bat even if H commersoni is restricted now to Madagascar
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AfriBats
That’s indeed Hipposideros vittatus (formerly synonymized under H. commersonii, and H. marungensis being a proper synonym of H. vittatus.
These are probably migratory bats, and we’d appreciated seeing this observations shared with the AfriBats project on iNaturalist at http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/afribats
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cmh78
I am not at home, so don’t have my books, but glancing over the Namibia species list and then a quick use of Google Image (which can be untrustworthy for bats) it appears you have a Commerson’s Leaf-nosed Bat, Hipposideros marungensis.