Hill's sheath-tailed bat

Hill's sheath-tailed bat (Taphozous hilli), also called Hill's tomb bat, is a small bat of the family Emballonuridae found in the deserts of central Australia. Darrell Kitchener described it in 1980, separating it from bats that had been presumed to be the commoner common sheath-tailed bat, and named it after the mammalogist John Edwards Hill of the British Museum. The holotype, a female skull and skin, was netted on 7 August 1979 at the Marandoo mine site near Mount Bruce in the Hamersley Range of Western Australia. It is dark brown on the back with an orange tint on the belly, has a forearm of 63 to 72 mm and weighs 20 to 29 g, and males have a gular throat pouch. It lives in arid country from the northwest through the central deserts of the Northern Territory to the northwest corner of South Australia, roosting in fissures at escarpments and in caves, with a preference for deeply cleft rock at cliffs near waterholes, and often at mine sites with the common sheath-tailed bat. It feeds on insects, and the IUCN lists it as Least Concern.