Lappet-eared free-tailed bat

The lappet-eared free-tailed bat, Mops major, is a bat of the family Molossidae found across a belt of tropical Africa from Benin and Ghana east to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, with records in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan and Togo. Its natural habitats are dry savanna and moist savanna. The French zoologist Édouard Louis Trouessart described it in 1897 as a subspecies of the little free-tailed bat, and the name major, meaning greater, reflects George Edward Dobson's remark that it was considerably larger. Francis Galton collected the holotype during his expedition to Egypt. It has very short dark brown fur, darker on the back than underneath, and whitish flight membranes.