Animal Diversity Web

This fam­ily is com­posed of a sin­gle genus con­tain­ing 12 species. Their dis­tri­b­u­tion in­cludes both trop­i­cal forests and arid trop­i­cal re­gions in Africa and South­east Asia.

Nyc­terids are small to medium in size. All have a pe­cu­liar deep lon­gi­tu­di­nal slit run­ning along the top of the ros­trum pos­te­rior to the nose. Its bor­ders are fleshy and com­plex and par­tially con­ceal the open­ing. The func­tion of this pouch is not known, but it has been sug­gested that it might some­how be in­volved in echolo­ca­tion (like the nose­leaf of phyl­losto­mids, a struc­ture that is ab­sent in nyc­terids). Most slit-faced bats are or­ange, brown, or gray. They have large, oval ears with a small but well-de­vel­oped tra­gus.

The skulls are dis­tinc­tive due to a deep de­pres­sion be­tween the or­bits, which prob­a­bly con­tains the pouch de­scribed above. Pos­tor­bital processes are pre­sent but hard to dis­tin­guish be­cause of the un­usu­ally broad supra­or­bital ridges ex­tend­ing over the or­bits. The pre­max­il­lae are made up of palatal branches only. These are well de­vel­oped and com­pletely fill the space be­tween the max­il­lae. These bats have a char­ac­ter­is­tic that is oth­er­wise un­known among mam­mals: the pos­te­rior tip of the last cau­dal ver­te­bra (at the tip of the tail) is 'T' shaped.

The mo­lars of ny­terids are dil­amb­dodont. The den­tal for­mula is 2/3, 1/1, 1/2, 3/3 = 32. Upper in­cisors are 2- or 3-lobed.

Nyc­terids have been found roost­ing alone, in pairs or in small fam­ily groups. This group has a great di­ver­sity of roost­ing habits, in­clud­ing caves, hol­low logs, tree branches, tun­nels, and human houses. They also some­times roost in the bur­rows of other mam­mals such as hedge­hogs, por­cu­pines, and aard­varks.

The diet of slit-faced bats is di­verse. Most species spe­cial­ize on arthro­pods, and one species, Nyc­teris gran­dis, reg­u­larly catches and eats ver­te­brates. They for­age close to sur­faces in­clud­ing rock faces and bushes.

The sup­posed sis­ter groups to the Nyc­teri­dae are the Mega­der­mati­dae and Rhi­nolophi­dae. No fos­sils are known.

Tech­ni­cal char­ac­ters

Ref­er­ences and lit­er­a­ture cited:

An­der­son, S. and J. K. Jones, Jr., 1984. Or­ders and Fam­i­lies of Re­cent Mam­mals of the World. John Wiley and Sons, New York. 686pp.

Feld­hamer, G. A., L. C. Drick­amer, S. H. Vessey, and J. F. Mer­ritt. 1999. Mam­mal­ogy. Adap­ta­tion, Di­ver­sity, and Ecol­ogy. WCB Mc­Graw-Hill, Boston. xii+563pp.

Fen­ton, M. B., P. Racey, and J.M. V. Rayner (eds.), 1987. Re­cent Ad­vances in the Study of Bats. Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, Cam­bridge.

Hill, J. E. and J. D. Smith, 1992. Bats: A Nat­ural His­tory. Uni­ver­sity of Texas Press, Austin.

Nowak, Ronald M., 1994. Walker's Bats of the World. Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity Press, Bal­ti­more.

Ran­some, Roger, 1990. The Nat­ural His­tory of Hi­ber­nat­ing Bats. Christo­pher Helm, Lon­don.

Vaughan, T. A., J. M. Ryan, N. J. Czaplewski. 2000. Mam­mal­ogy. Fourth Edi­tion. Saun­ders Col­lege Pub­lish­ing, Philadel­phia. vii+565pp.

Wil­son, D. E., and D. M. Reeder. 1993. Mam­mal Species of the World, A Tax­o­nomic and Ge­o­graphic Ref­er­ence. 2nd edi­tion. Smith­son­ian In­sti­tu­tion Press, Wash­ing­ton. xviii+1206 pp.

Con­trib­u­tors

Bret We­in­stein (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor, Phil Myers (au­thor), Mu­seum of Zo­ol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.