Mystacina, Chalinolobus and Craseonycteris

Mystacina tuberculata (Gray 1843; 6-7cm snout-vent length) is the extant New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat. Distinct from other bats, this one spends a lot of time on the forest floor in deep leaf litter on all fours. The tail extends beyong the uropatagia. It sometimes feeds on nectar with a long hairy tongue, but can be considered omnivorous. The sharp incisor teeth are used to chew out soft tree interiors to create arboreal burrows. The propatagium is small to aid in terrestrial locomotion.

Craseonycteris smallest bat smallest pterosaur smallet bird

Craseonycteris thonglongyai. (Hill 1974, 3cm in length, 2g in mass) is the extant Old World Hog-nosed bat (aka Kitti's hog-nosed bat, aka bumblebee bat) known as the smallest of all bats and restricted to a cave on the coast of Thailand. The premaxilla rings the nares. The zygomatic arch does not expand laterally. The skull is 1.1cm in length.

Chalinolobus tuberculatus (Peters 1866, Parnaby et al 2024) is the extant New Zealand long-tailed bat or long-tailed wattled bat. Currently not yet tested in the LRT. Note the split premaxilla, gracile jugal and reduction of tooth number along with large cranium and slight split separating the squamosal from the exoccipital.

These are long-tailed bats from New Zealand that caught my attention due to their primitive habit of crawling along the forest litter in search of small insect prey.

Daniel MJ 1979. The New Zealand short-tailed bat, Mystacina tuberculata; A review of present knowledge. NZ Journal of Zoology, 6(2), 357-370.

Gray JE 1843. List of the Specimens of Mammalia in the Collection of the British Museum, George Woodfall and Son, London.

Hill JE 1974. A new family, genus and species of bat (Mammalia; Chiroptera) from Thailand. Bull. British Mus. Nat. Hist., Zoo1. Ser., 27:301-336.

Parnaby HE et al 2024. A New Species of Lobe-lipped Bat (Chalinolobus: Vespertilionidae) from southern Papua New Guinea. Zootaxa. 5492(3); 301–324.

Peters WKH 1866. Fernere Mittheilungen zur Kenntniss der Flederthiere, namentlich
fiber Arten des Leidener und Britischen Museums. Monatsber. Akad. Wiss., Berlin: 672-681.

Simmons JA, Kick SA and Lawrence BD 1984. Echolocation and hearing in the mouse-tailed bat, Rhinopoma hardwickei: acoustic evolution of echolocation in bats. Journal of Comparative Physiology A 154: 347–356.

wiki/Mystacina
wiki/Craseonycteris
wiki/Chalinolobus