Big-eared Wooly Bat
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| Chrotopterus auritus Peters, 1865 |
The Big-eared Wooly Bat or Peter's Wooly False Vampire Bat, Chrotopterus auritus, is a bat species native to Central and South America.
They are large predatory bats, the second largest bat species in the neotropics, and feed on fruits, beetles, moths, lizards, small mammals and birds, including opossums, rodents and passerine birds. They can take prey of up to 70 g weight, but usually feed on smaller vertebrates of 10 to 35 g, specially small rodents.
This bat species lives in warm subtropical forests, usually roosting in caves and hollow logs where they, sometimes, bring their preys to eat. Sometimes they can not be found in disturbed forests.
Big-eared Wooly bats fly slowly, partially because of their size, flying at 1 or 2 meters above ground and usually in dense thickets. They give birth to a single young after a gestation period of more than 100 days. Colonies size vary between one to seven individuals, consisting of a male-female adult pair and young(s).
[edit] References
- Theodore H. Flemming, 2003. A Bat Man in the Tropics: Chasing El Duende.
- Mammals of the Neotropics, 2000: Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil.
- Louise H. Emmons and François Feer, 2000. Neotropical Rainforest Mammals.
