Bate's slit-faced bat (''Nycteris arge'') is a species of

slit-faced bat ''Nycteris'' comprises a genus of bats commonly called slit-faced or hollow-faced bats. They are grouped in the family Nycteridae. The bats are found in East Malaysia, Indonesia, and many parts of Africa. Description They are small bats, from i ...

frequently confused with '' Nycteris major''. It is broadly distributed and common, living throughout many parts of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

in forests and

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

s. It was described as a new species in 1903 by British zoologist

Oldfield Thomas Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appoin ...

. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

had been collected from

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

by George Latimer Bates.

Description

Bates's slit-faced bat, as the common name suggests, has a "deep median furrow" down its face. Its ears are large and rounded. Its dentition#Dental formula, dental formula is for a total of 32 teeth. It has a particularly large brain for an insectivore, insectivorous bat species.

Range and status

It is found throughout Central Africa, Central and West Africa, including Angola, Benin, Burundi,

, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda. It is found in lowland areas. In 2017, it was evaluated as a least-concern species by the IUCN.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1831239 Nycteridae Bats of Africa Mammals described in 1903 Taxa named by Oldfield Thomas