Profile
In flight
Bats
Ghost Bat
Macroderma gigas
- epic
- 36 km/h
- Vulnerable
Australia's only carnivorous bat hunts frogs, lizards, and other bats. White wings glow against cave walls.
- Population
- roughly 4,000-6,000 mature individuals (decreasing trend)
- Habitat
- Limestone caves, rock crevices, boulder piles, and abandoned mine tunnels with warm, humid microclimates and complex multi-entrance shaft systems, within surrounding forests, savannas, shrublands, and rocky gorge/outcrop country in both arid and tropical regions
- Fun fact
- Despite its ghostly pale-to-dark grey fur, the ghost bat is Australia's only carnivorous bat and the country's largest microbat, capable of ambushing and subduing prey nearly its own size, including birds, other bats, and small reptiles.
- Range
- Endemic to northern Australia in disjunct, geographically isolated populations: the Pilbara and Kimberley (Western Australia), the Top End (Northern Territory), and Queensland (Cape York Peninsula and central-eastern localities); historical range has contracted significantly from a formerly wider central-Australian distribution
- Diet
- Carnivorous - Australia's only bat that preys on vertebrates, taking small mammals, birds, reptiles (including geckos, legless lizards and snakes), frogs, other bats, and large insects, typically by sit-and-wait ambush from a perch using sight, hearing, and echolocation
- Size
- 0.11 m
- Wingspan
- 0.5 m
- Lifespan
- 22 years
