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Rhinolophus luctus
This Bats have a flattened nose which shaped like Horseshoe, hence the name.
Tropical rainforest, this bats are known to roosts solitary or in pairs in small to large caves, rocky outcrops and overhanging ledges and large trees with hollow.
I was part of an expedition team doing a survey of bio-diversity of Mt. Lucia which includes a group of Bat researchers from 2 local Universities who joined the expedition to help documents species of Bats that can be found from the Mountain and also to give their students some field experience in collecting bats using mist nets and subsequently collecting data about them. All bats collected were eventually released.
Spotted on Jan 24, 2018
Submitted on Feb 5, 2018
3 Comments
Yes, you are right, it seems the shape of the nose helps with their echo location calls.
@shebebusynow....I thought maybe it could be a heat loss mechanism but Wikipedia says Because these bats echolocate nasally, this "nose-leaf" is thought to serve some role in modifying and directing the echolocation call
Is there any idea about why their nose (and that of the leaf-nosed bats) are so elaborate? It must have some sort of purpose.