Seba's short-tailed bat
Carollia perspicillata
— Where the name comes from
Perspicillata is the Latin “spectacled”, from perspicillum, “lens”: the face carries pale lines around the eyes. The common name recalls Albertus Seba, the Amsterdam apothecary who in the 18th century filled his house with animals preserved in spirits and published a monumental illustrated catalogue of them — one of the sources from which Linnaeus drew many of the species he went on to name.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Bats
- Habitat
- Rainforest understorey, secondary forest, abandoned cropland
- Range
- From southern Mexico to Brazil and Bolivia
- Size
- 4.8–6.5 cm of body, 30 cm wingspan, 15–25 g
- Diet
- Frugivore — chiefly the fruit of piper, the pepper genus
- Lifespan
- 10 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It is one of the most abundant mammals of the Neotropical forest.
- 02
It specialises on piper fruit, which no bird exploits seriously.
- 03
The males defend harems in tree hollows and under bridges.
— What sets it apart
It is the planter of clearings. Its favourite food plants are the pipers, pioneer shrubs that are first to colonise openings in the forest, and this bat carries their tiny seeds by the hundred in its gut, sowing them as it flies over bare ground. Where it passes, a clearing made by a landslip or a felling closes up far faster: the first layer of vegetation that covers the wound is nearly always material sown by this species.
