About Bats
Costa Rica has an impressive diversity of bats with approximately 110 species. Half of the countries' mammals are bats! Bats are important to the country's ecosystem, acting as pollinators, seed dispersers, and pest controllers. Most bats feed on insects, but others eat fruit or lap nectar from night-blooming flowers. Bats are nocturnal and most are lunarphobic, avoiding bright light, including moonlight.
Bats echolocate by emitting calls that bounce off objects around them and send signals back. As a result, bats can determine how far away an object is, how big it is, and even what texture it might have.
The bat species shown here include Palla’s Nectar Bat, Common Tent-making Bat, and Round-eared Bat.
Palla’s Nectar Bat has an extendable, very long tongue. If we humans had a tongue of these proportions it would be 9 ft long! The tongue is covered in hair-like structures which work like “nectar mops” that efficiently collects nectar in flowers. Another specialization of this bat is that its digestive physiology facilitates digestion of nectar and pollen.
The Tent-making Bat gets its name from its behavior of constructing tents out of large, fan-shaped leaves. These roosts provide excellent protection from the tropical rains, and a single tent roost may house several bats at once.
There are three different species of Round-eared Bats in Costa Rica, and I’m not sure which one this is. The bat was in a hole in a tree. I took the photo with my iPhone while shining a light in the hole.