Love puppies? Meet these even cuter bats dubbed ‘sky puppies’ found in the forests of South and Central America.
The dog-faced bats are a fast-flying, insectivorous species that are highly difficult to spot. Scientists have only recorded six species so far, but now an international team of scientists has succeeded in recognising two more species of these bats.
Named Cynomops freemani — in honour of Dr. Patricia W. Freeman, a scientist who studied bats — these tiny bats with a wing span of just 4 cm were found in the Canal Zone region of Panama. The bat is reddish-brown to dark chocolate brown in colour with silky short fur.
The second species named Cynomops tonkigui (tonkigui means bat in Waorani,a language spoken by the natives of Ecuador) was found in the eastern Andes of Ecuador and Colombia. It has a dark cinnamon brown colour and is about the same size as Cynomops freemani .
Ultrasonic calls
Morphological analysis, acoustics data and modern DNA studies have helped identify the new species.
The scientific paper published recently in Mammalian Biology even describes the calls of the new species that can be heard using ultrasonic recording devices.
“We were very lucky to catch several different individuals of this species in mist nets and to record their calls. Having the call data may make it possible for us to find them again in the future and to learn more about this newly discovered bat species,” says Thomas Sattler, from the Swiss Ornithological Institute and one of the authors of the paper in a release.
“Molecular tools combined with meticulous morphological measurements are opening new doors to the diversity of this poorly understood group,” says Rachel Page of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “This discovery begs the question – what other new species are there, right under our very noses? What new diversity is yet to be uncovered?”
