1,500th discovered bat species is a ‘god of the island’

1,500th discovered bat species is a ‘god of the island’

It’s official: the world’s 1,500th known bat species has been discovered in Equatorial Guinea. And as luck would have it, Pipistrellus etula’s announcement is just in time for Bat Appreciation Month. Due to bats’ delicate anatomy, there aren’t many well-preserved bat specimens in the fossil record. Still, biologists estimate that bats have existed for at least 55 to 56 million years. However, only a few of those extinct species are documented, m…