Science Art: Thumbless Bat, 1857

Scientific illustration of the thumbless bat, Furipterus horrens, what eats bugs in Costa Rica
Scientific illustration of the thumbless bat, Furipterus horrens, what eats bugs in Costa Rica

This bat is probably misnamed, since its wings are hands and it has a digit in those wings it would recognize as a thumb, just a very small one that is “enclosed in the edge of the wing membrane,” the sources say. (Its current scientific name, Furipterus horrens seems to mean something like “horrible and furry-winged” which also seems a little unfair.) It’s also sometimes called the smoky bat, which has a slightly cooler vibe, though that’s more accurately applied to its cousin, Amorphochilus schnablii. The cute litte critters live in caves and wet forests from Costa Rica south to Peru and from Brazil east to Trinidad, gobbling up bugs every evening… mostly moths and butterflies, it must be admitted. Oh, well.

I don’t know too much about this image – it’s displayed in the Encyclopedia of Life with a CC credit to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, but seems to have originally come from the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London.