A Gainesville-based animal research group working in the Solomon Islands near Papua New Guinea recently encountered something no one had seen in years — the New Georgian Monkey-Faced Fruit Bat.
The Lubee Bat Conservancy discovered one of the most endangered bat species on the Solomon Islands after no sightings in five years.
Brian Pope, Lubee Bat Conservancy director, said the research team got together with a local group of Australian researchers to study and capture the bats.
“These type of bats are so rare that any type of research would be beneficial to the species,” Pope said.
This bat hasn’t been researched for 20 years.
These elusive mammals are hard to spot because their habitat is disappearing at a rapid rate. The rainforest these bats call home is not protected, Pope said.
Gabby Milanes, a 20-year-old UF entomology and nematology senior, said it’s important to educate people about the impact humans have on their own environment.
“A lot of animals have become extinct because people don’t realize that their actions affects the animals that live around them,” she said.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 5/20/2014 under the headline "Local conservancy helps find almost extinct bat"]
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the name of the bat as New Gregorian instead of New Georgian Monkey-Faced bat. It also stated the bat was found in Papua New Guinea instead of the Solomon Islands.
