Elegant myotis facts for kids
The elegant myotis (Myotis elegans) is a small bat that lives in parts of Central America and Mexico. You can find it in countries like Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. It's a type of vesper bat, which means it's active at night.
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What Does the Elegant Myotis Look Like?
The elegant myotis is a really tiny bat, weighing only about 4 grams. That's less than a stack of four paper clips! Its fur is brown on its back. The fur on its belly is lighter and has a golden color.
Its ears are a pale brown color. The skin on its wings, called flight membranes, is a bit darker than its fur. Inside its ear, there's a thin, pointed part called a tragus. This tragus has a deep notch, or cut, in it.
This bat is about 7.6 centimeters (3 inches) long from its head to the tip of its tail. Its tail is about 3.5 centimeters (1.4 inches) long. Its forearm, which is part of its wing, is about 3.4 centimeters (1.3 inches) long.
How Is It Different from Other Bats?
The elegant myotis looks a bit like other bats, such as the California myotis and the Western small-footed bat. However, it has a shorter tail than these bats. Its golden belly fur is also more noticeable.
The notch in its tragus is deeper, and its skull is shorter. Compared to the Western small-footed bat, the elegant myotis has paler ears, lips, and wings. Its ears are also shorter, and its tragus is thinner.
How Does It Find Food?
Like most vesper bats, the elegant myotis uses echolocation to find its way around and hunt. This means it sends out very high-pitched sounds. These sounds bounce off objects and come back to the bat.
By listening to the echoes, the bat can create a "sound map" of its surroundings. This helps it find insects in the dark. The sounds it makes are usually above 50 kilohertz (kHz), which is too high for humans to hear.
Life and Habits
Scientists don't know a lot about the daily life and habits of the elegant myotis. We do know that they live in dry forests where trees lose their leaves in certain seasons. These forests are found in places like El Salvador.
What Does It Eat?
The elegant myotis is an insect-eater. Scientists have studied their droppings to find out what they eat. They found that this bat preys on different kinds of insects.
Its diet includes Lepidoptera (like moths), Coleoptera (beetles), and Diptera (flies). Since only a few studies have been done, it's likely that they eat even more types of insects than we know right now.
