Mammals of the WorldGray Long-eared Bat
Plecotus austriacus
- Order
- Chiroptera
- Family
- Vespertilionidae
- Genus
- Plecotus
- IUCN status
- NT
- Distribution
- Madeira|United Kingdom|Sweden|Portugal|Spain|France|Belgium|Luxembourg|Netherlands|Germany|Switzerland|Liechtenstein|Italy|Malta|Austria|Czech Republic|Poland|Hungary|Slovakia|Slovenia|Croatia|Bosnia and Herzegovina|Albania|Montenegro|North Macedonia|Greece|Turkey|Bulgaria|Romania|Moldova|Ukraine
- Realm
- Palearctic
Other names: Gray Big-eared Bat
About this species
- Diet
- Mostly moths; small lizards recorded in captivity
- Habitat
- Lowland meadows and marshes
The grey long-eared bat is a fairly large European bat with distinctive long ears with a fold in them. It is extremely similar to the more common brown long-eared bat and was only distinguished from it in the 1960s, but has a paler belly. It hunts above woodland, often by day, and mostly for moths (Wikipedia, general species account).
Its main foraging habitats are lowland meadows and marshes, and it locates insect prey by echolocation, using frequencies between 18 and 45kHz with most energy at 28kHz. The source opened gives its distribution as all of Europe except the Scandinavian Peninsula, so how the species occurs in Nepal is unclear and the entry is flagged for checking. Nationally Data Deficient (Nepal National Red List 2011).
Description: Wildlife of Nepal guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)