Horseshoe bats are bats in the family Rhinolophidae. They are found in the Old World, mostly in tropical or subtropical areas. They get their common name from their large nose-leafs, which are shaped like horseshoes. Some species or their guano are used in traditional medicine in Nepal, India, Vietnam, and Senegal.
About Horseshoe bat in brief
Horseshoe bats are bats in the family Rhinolophidae. They are found in the Old World, mostly in tropical or subtropical areas. They get their common name from their large nose-leafs, which are shaped like horseshoes. They hunt insects and spiders, swooping down on prey from a perch, or gleaning from foliage. Some species or their guano are used in traditional medicine in Nepal, India, Vietnam, and Senegal. Several species are the natural reservoirs of SARS coronavirus, though masked palm civets were the intermediate hosts through which humans became infected. Some evidence suggests that some species could be the natural reservoir of Sars-CoV-2, which causes coronav virus disease 2019. Horseshoes are considered small or medium-sized microbats, weighing 4–28 g, with forearm lengths of 30–75 mm and combined lengths of head and body of 35–110 mm. The fur, long and smooth in most species, can be reddish-brown, blackish, or bright orange-red. Little is known about their mating systems, but at least one species is monogamous, while another is polygynous. Gestation is approximately seven weeks and one offspring is produced at a time. A typical lifespan is six or seven years, but one greater horseshoe bat lived more than thirty years. The most recent common ancestor of all horseshOE bats lived 34–40 million years ago, though it is unclear where the geographic roots of the family are.
The taxonomy is complex, as genetic evidence shows the likely existence of many cryptic species, as well as species recognized as distinct that may have little genetic divergence from previously recognized taxa. After the split between Rhinopomatidae and Hipposideridae, RhinOLophidae are now most often recognized as a family, though the early 2000s saw some authors consider them as a separate family. They have highly sophisticated echolocation, using constant frequency calls at high duty cycles to detect prey in areas of high environmental clutters. The species are hunted for food in several regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, but also Southeast Asia. They can also be used as a source of disease, as food, and traditional medicine, and are relevant to humans in some regions as a Source of Disease, as Food, and Traditional Medicine. The bats are in the superfamily Rh inolophoidea, along with Craseonycteridae, Megadermatidae,Rhinonycteidae, and RhinOPomataceae. They were first described as a genus in 1799 by French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède. Initially, all extant bats were in Rhinoleophus, aswell as the species now in Hipposidedos. In 1825, British zoologist John Edward Gray subdivided Vespertilionidae into subfamilies, including what he called Rhinorophina. In1816, English zoologist William Elford Leach proposed the genus name Phyllorhina.
You want to know more about Horseshoe bat?
This page is based on the article Horseshoe bat published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 19, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
