Yellow-bellied House Bat

Fascinating facts about the Yellow-bellied House Bat

• These bats are fiercely loyal to their roosts, often returning to the same tree hollow or wall crack night after night. Colonies are tiny, rarely more than 12 individuals. Their preference for secluded cracks has led them to colonise suburban houses, where unsuspecting residents host quiet, invisible bat families.
• When darkness falls, the bats launch a two-hour feeding marathon, hunting beetles, plant-sucking bugs, flies, termites, moths and lacewings before returning to roost. Their fast, large wings let them out-fly the smaller Cape serotine, which sometimes shares the same shelter.
• At just 130 mm long, a forearm of 50-58 mm and a weight of only 23 g, the African yellow bat. Its compact size lets it slip through tiny cracks in walls and tree hollows, expanding the range of places it can hide from predators and humans alike.
• Spanning from Senegal and Gambia in the west to Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia in the east, and reaching down to South Africa's Eastern Cape, the African yellow bat blankets the entire Sub-Saharan belt.
• Mating in the Austral Autumn, females give birth to twins at the end of November or early December, timing the arrival of newborns with the start of the Southern Spring. females wean their young within weeks.

Sources

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

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Yellow-bellied House Bat

As the sun dips below the savannah horizon, the yellow-bellied house bat stirs, unfolding its delicate wings like a dark, leathery cloak, and takes to the evening skies with a gentle, fluttering beat. With an effortless glide, it navigates the warm, golden light, its large, round eyes drinking in the sights and sounds of the African night, as it embarks on its nocturnal hunt for insects. In this fleeting, crepuscular world, the yellow-bellied house bat reigns supreme, a master of the twilight realm, its very existence a testament to the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

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