Southern Myotis

Fascinating facts about the Southern Myotis

• A Southern Myotis can snatch a mosquito from the surface of a river without breaking the water—its echolocation is so precise it detects ripples smaller than a grain of sand. The bat's call frequency shifts mid-hunt, switching from long-range scanning to short-range targeting in milliseconds, giving it a three-dimensional map of prey movement underwater and above it.
• Unlike most bats that hunt insects mid-air, Southern Myotis hunt by skimming water with their enlarged feet—claws the size of a grasshopper's leg that rake just below the surface. A single bat can pluck 20 to 30 small fish or water insects from a river in one night, making them the only Australian bat that regularly feeds on aquatic prey.
• A Southern Myotis mother gives birth to twins in a maternity roost, and within weeks those pups are nearly adult-sized despite weighing barely 3 grams at birth. The mother lactates for only 4 to 6 weeks before her pups are fully independent—one of the shortest weaning periods among Australian mammals, a strategy that forces young bats to learn hunting faster than they would on land.
• Southern Myotis navigate by echolocation calls at 110 kilohertz—ultrasonic frequencies so high a human ear cannot hear them, yet precise enough to distinguish a mosquito from a moth wing-beat pattern. Their brain processes these echoes in real-time, updating their flight path 10 times per second, which means they experience the world in temporal slow-motion compared to how we see it.
• Each night a Southern Myotis flies up to 30 kilometres along the same river system, returning to the same hunting pools night after night, following riverbank landmarks and the polarised light pattern of moonlit water. They form year-round roosts with the same colony members—sometimes 50 individuals in a single cave—making river systems their ancestral highways, used by the same family groups for generations.

At a glance

About the Southern Myotis

In the warm, golden light of dusk, the Southern Myotis bat takes to the skies, its delicate wings beating at a hypnotic pace as it dances through the air in pursuit of insects. With each effortless glide, it weaves a intricate tapestry of sound and motion, its high-pitched calls echoing through the landscape as it navigates the world with ease. As it flits and darts, its remarkable agility and precision are a testament to the wonders of evolution, a true marvel of the natural world.

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