The Hill’s horseshoe bat has been lost to science twice. And we’ve found it — twice.
Every night, from sunset until close to midnight, the researchers stretched nets across trails, where bats are most likely to fly, and kept watch. Then, after a few hours of rest, they woke early to check the traps again. It was cold enough that the bats could die if stuck too long.
At 4 a.m. on the fourth day, the researchers caught a bat with the distinctive horseshoe-shaped nose of all horseshoe bat species. But it looked slightly different from others they had captured. This one had darker fur and a pointed tip on its nose.After a moment of celebration at 4 a.m., the research team began studying features of the specimen to see if what they caught was indeedThe researchers felt “almost 99 percent sure” they had found the lost bat.
Nearly 40 years later, Nziza and colleagues compared the measurements of their bat, which was released into the wild, to the preserved bat. At long last, it can be confidently said that