Northern Hoary Bat

Fascinating facts about the Northern Hoary Bat

• A hoary bat can travel up to 39 km in a single foraging bout, a distance few small mammals achieve. It hunts alone, targeting moths as its primary prey, and does so over open fields and lakes as well as the edges of its preferred coniferous woodlands. This extensive flight range lets it exploit widely scattered food sources during its nightly hunt.
• The hoary bat is the largest bat regularly encountered in Canada, out-sizing all native species. Adults measure 13 to 14.5 cm in length, bear a 40 cm wingspan and weigh about 26 g, giving them a commanding silhouette in flight. Their dense dark-brown fur with white-tipped hairs creates the characteristic hoary appearance that inspired their name.
• Female hoary bats are markedly larger than males, weighing about 40 % more. Females typically bear twins, though litter sizes can range from one to four young.
• Hoary bats face a serious threat from wind turbines, with more than a thousand individuals killed in 2005, accounting for 40 % of all bat fatalities at turbines across the United States. The majority of these deaths occur during migration in the spring and autumn.
• Genetic research indicates that true hoary bats may also occupy the Hawaiian islands alongside the endemic L. semotus, creating a hidden overlap of species. Studies from 2015 and 2017 identified two separate colonisation events: one about 1.4 million years ago by the ancestors of L. semotus and a more recent arrival of L. This suggests a cryptic sympatry, although a 2020 study later found only L.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Northern Hoary Bat

As the last wisps of sunlight surrender to the evening sky, the Northern Hoary Bat stirs, its tawny fur fluffed against the coming chill, and takes to the air with a soft whoosh of leathery wings. With an effortless elegance, it dances on the wind, its long, pointed ears twitching as it navigates the darkness, a master of the nocturnal realm, where its high-pitched calls echo through the forest like a whispered secret. In this fleeting, crepuscular world, the Northern Hoary Bat reigns, a mysterious and elusive monarch, its very existence a reminder of the beauty and fragility that hangs in the balance of our fragile ecosystem.

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