{"id":1969,"date":"2010-02-12T01:45:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.pasopacifico.org\/2010\/02\/nicaraguas-spectral-bat\/"},"modified":"2024-02-28T14:20:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T20:20:52","slug":"nicaraguas-spectral-bat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/nicaraguas-spectral-bat\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicaragua’s Spectral Bat"},"content":{"rendered":"

A question via Twitter:<\/p>\n

“Is it true that Nicaragua is home to the world’s 2nd largest bat?”
\n– Tours To Nicaragua (@NicaGuide)<\/p>\n

The answer is a qualified “yes.”\u00a0Nicaragua is home to the spectral bat, the largest known carnivorous<\/i><\/b> bat, and a member of the megabat family.<\/p>\n

The largest of the “megabats”\u00a0is the Giant golden-crowned flying fox (Acerodon jubatus), a rare fruit bat<\/i><\/b> whose wingspan can be almost six feet. Nicaragua’s spectral bat (Vampyrum spectrum) generally has a wingspan just under three feet, and is believed to be the largest carnivorous bat in the megabat family. There may be other fruit bats, in addition to the Giant golden-crowned flying fox, which are larger than the spectral bat, but the spectral bat is larger than all other carnivorous bats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

Pictured above is our director of conservation science, Dr. Kim Williams-Guillen (R), with the famous bat expert Merlin Tuttle (L), Nicaraguan biologists, and a spectral bat found at Nicaragua’s Volcan Mombacho during a 2008 workshop on methods for surveying bat populations.<\/p>\n

Let us know if you have other questions about the flora and fauna of Central America!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A question via Twitter: “Is it true that Nicaragua is home to the world’s 2nd largest bat?” – Tours To Nicaragua (@NicaGuide) The answer is a qualified “yes.”\u00a0Nicaragua is home to the spectral bat, the largest known carnivorous bat, and a member of the megabat family. The largest of the “megabats”\u00a0is the Giant golden-crowned flying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife-conservation","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6267,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/6267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pasopacifico.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}