Wrinkle-lipped Bat (Mops plicatus) lives in tropical rainforest across Southeast Asia. It feeds on insects and fruit. Its conservation status is Least Concern.
Fascinating facts about the Wrinkle-lipped Bat
- When a 36-year-old guard named Tun Lin earns just 80,000 kyat (around $60) a month protecting Linno cave, more than 400,000 wrinkle-lipped bats pour out at dusk, streaming through a single opening for over an hour. Their massive nightly exodus shows how a single roost can support a colony, underscoring the bat's role as a keystone for insect control and guano-based fertilizer that local farmers depend on.
- In 2020 the IUCN listed the wrinkle-lipped bat as Least Concern because it occupies a wide geographic range that includes protected areas and maintains a large, stable population. Yet local threats loom: hunters once scooped up "over a thousand" bats with nets, and limestone extraction in Myanmar has already forced a colony of roughly 404,000 individuals to abandon its roost, showing how even abundant species can be pushed toward decline by targeted human pressure.
- An estimated 178 million metric tons of limestone each year across Southeast Asia, and less than 1 percent of the country's limestone karsts are protected. This massive quarrying threatens the fragile karst caves that house wrinkle-lipped bat colonies, illustrating how a single industry can jeopardize entire ecosystems that depend on those underground roosts for survival.
- A bat the size of a thumb can span a forearm of 40-50 mm and still pack 30 teeth into its tiny mouth. Its dental formula "1.1.2.3 / 2.1.2.3" adds up to exactly thirty. elevations as high as 950 m (3,120 ft).
- The species was first described in 1800 by Scottish scientist Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, who originally placed it in the genus Vespertilio. Its name "plicatus" means "folded" in Latin, likely referring to the bat's wrinkled lips or folded ears.
Sources
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At a glance
RangeSoutheast Asia
HabitatTropical rainforest
DietInsects and fruit
About the Wrinkle-lipped Bat
In the sweltering twilight of the tropical forest, the wrinkle-lipped bat emerges as a whisper of darkness, its leathery wings beating with a soft urgency as it pursues the insect throngs that dance around the glowing trees. With a face creased by deep, mysterious folds, this enigmatic creature navigates the shadows with an uncanny ease, its large eyes drinking in the faint light that filters through the canopy above. As it flits and weaves through the dense undergrowth, the wrinkle-lipped bat embodies the very essence of nocturnal stealth, a master of the hidden world that unfolds beneath the stars.
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