Geoffroy's bat
Myotis emarginatus
— Where the name comes from
Emarginatus is the Latin “notched”, from margo: the outer edge of the ear has a clear indentation about halfway up, which is the feature by which the species is recognised in the hand. It is a detail so small and so constant that the whole identification of this animal has rested, for two centuries, on a notch.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Bats
- Habitat
- Warm attics, caves; hunting in woodland and orchards, and inside cattle sheds
- Range
- Southern and central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East
- Size
- 4.1–5.3 cm of body, 24 cm wingspan, 7–15 g
- Diet
- Insectivore — spiders and flies gathered off surfaces, not in flight
- Lifespan
- Up to 18 years
— Characteristics
- 01
Spiders can make up over half its diet.
- 02
It hovers in front of surfaces to pluck prey off them.
- 03
It frequents the inside of cattle sheds, hunting the flies around the stock.
— What sets it apart
It eats spiders, web and all, and to do so it must solve a problem a bat never normally faces: the prey does not move and makes no sound. It hovers in front of a wall or a frond, lights the surface with its sonar looking for the shape of the web, and plucks the spider from the middle. Analyses of its droppings regularly turn up fragments of silk along with legs, and it is one of the few mammals in the world whose diet is half arachnid.
