Little Forest Bat - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Little Forest Bat is a species of vesper bat

Vesper bat

Vesper bats , also known as Evening bats or Common bats, are the largest and best-known family of bats. They belong to the suborder Microchiroptera . There are over three hundred species distributed all over the world, on every continent except Antarctica...

in the Vespertilionidae family.

It is found only in South-eastern Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

including Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

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It is a tiny bat often weighing less than 4 grams (males in some areas weigh as little as 2.5 grams). It is sometimes referred to as Australia's smallest mammal, although the Northern or Koopmans Pipistrelle Pipistrellus westralis is possibly smaller, weighing on average around 3 grams. It is the smallest bat in Tasmania

Tasmania

Biology and Ecology

The Little Forest Bat is one of the most commonly observed bats in South-eastern Australia, it is found in a variety of habitats including Eucalypt

Eucalypt

Eucalypts are woody plants belonging to three closely related genera:Eucalyptus, Corymbia and Angophora.In 1995 new evidence, largely genetic, indicated that some prominent Eucalyptus species were actually more closely related to Angophora than to the other eucalypts; they were split off into the...

woodlands and forests as well as in rural, semi-rural and some urban areas. It is an insectivore

Insectivore

An insectivore is a type of carnivore with a diet that consists chiefly of insects and similar small creatures. An alternate term is entomophage, which also refers to the human practice of eating insects....

and roosts in tree hollows.

Females become sexually mature in their first year and males in their second year. It is assumed the males wake from torpor

Torpor

Torpor, sometimes called temporary hibernation is a state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually characterized by a reduced body temperature and rate of metabolism. Animals that go through torpor include birds and some mammals such as mice and bats...

and mate with the females during winter. A single pup is born in spring (October - November).

Identification

The Little Forest Bat is very small with pale grey or brownish fur. The tragus

Tragus

The tragus is a small pointed eminence of the external ear, situated in front of the concha, and projecting backward over the meatus. Its name comes from the Greek: tragos, goat, and is descriptive of its general covering on its under surface with a tuft of hair, resembling a goat's beard...

is usually white and the skin on the face

Face

The face is a central sense organ complex, for those animals that have one, normally on the ventral surface of the head, and can, depending on the definition in the human case, include the hair, forehead, eyebrow, eyelashes, eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, mouth, lips, philtrum, temple, teeth, skin, and...

, feet and forearm

Forearm

-See also:*Forearm flexors*Forearm muscles...

is usually pinkish. Adults usually weigh between 2.5 and 5 grams and the forearm

Forearm

-See also:*Forearm flexors*Forearm muscles...

is usually less than 30mm (mean =28.5). Females are slightly larger than males.
The Little Forest Bat is very similar in appearance and often confused with a number of other bats that it co-occurs with ( sympatric) including Vespadelus regulus, Vespadelus darlingtoni, Vespadelus baverstocki, Vespadelus troughtoni, Vespadelus pumilus and Scotorepens greyii. Live bats can be differentiated from these species using a combination of size, relative finger bone lengths and, in males, penis shape. Males have a distinctly shaped baculum

Baculum

The baculum is a bone found in the penis of most mammals. It is absent in humans, but present in other primates, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee.The bone aids in sexual intercourse.-Purpose:...

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There is some variation in the morphology

Morphology (biology)

In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features....

of this species across its range, with some taxonomists suggesting there may be cryptic species that have not yet been identified within the species.

Echolocation call

The echolocation

Animal echolocation

Echolocation, also called biosonar, is the biological sonar used by several kinds of animals.Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects...

call of the Little Forest Bat is regionally variable, in New South Wales the characteristic frequency of search phase calls is between 42.5 and 53 kilohertz depending on the region where it is found. This is more than double the maximum frequency of the human hearing range

Hearing range

For more detail on human hearing see Audiogram, Equal loudness contours and Hearing impairment.Hearing range usually describes the range of frequencies that can be heard by an animal or human, though it can also refer to the range of levels...

and cannot be heard without the assistance of a bat detector

Bat detector

A bat detector is a device used to detect the presence of bats by converting their echolocation ultrasound signals to audible frequencies as they are emitted by the bats...

Biology and Ecology

Identification

Echolocation call

Further reading