Beccari's sheath-tailed bat

Beccari's sheath-tailed bat (Emballonura beccarii) is a small insect-eating bat of the family Emballonuridae that lives in New Guinea and some nearby islands in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. The German naturalist Wilhelm Peters and the Italian naturalist Giacomo Doria described it as a new species in 1881, from a specimen collected at Ansus on Yapen Island, and the name honours Odoardo Beccari, an Italian botanist who led a zoological expedition on New Guinea where the bat was first documented. It is nocturnal and roosts by day in sheltered places such as caves. At night it forages for insects along forest streams, in dense forest and in clearings, and it has been recorded from sea level up to about 1,500 metres. The IUCN currently evaluates it as Least Concern, although some populations may be threatened by overharvesting for bushmeat.