East Asian free-tailed bat

The East Asian free-tailed bat (Tadarida insignis) is a free-tailed bat of eastern Asia that was formerly considered part of the same species as the European free-tailed bat. Its range includes China, the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan and Japan, and it is known to roost in caves. Edward Blyth described it as a new species in 1862 from a holotype collected by Robert Swinhoe and placed it in the now defunct genus Nyctinomus. In 1873 George Edward Dobson treated it as a synonym of another species, which Oldfield Thomas in turn deemed a synonym of the European free-tailed bat. It has a forearm length of 57 to 65 millimetres and long, narrow wings. As of 2019 the IUCN evaluated it as Data Deficient because it is poorly studied and little is known about its biology, ecology, population size and trend. It is presumably threatened by destruction of its roosts, since cave tourism and stone quarrying remove its cave roosting habitat.