Bat Specimen | Short Nose Cynopterus Brachyotis

A preserved lesser short-nosed fruit bat, Cynopterus brachyotis, mounted face down with the wings folded. About five inches long and two wide.

Since anyone spending ninety dollars on a dead animal should be told: the IUCN assesses this species as Least Concern, widely distributed and abundant across South and Southeast Asia, and no Cynopterus appears on any CITES appendix. It is also widely treated as a crop pest by fruit growers across that range. We would rather tell you that than let you wonder about it after it arrives.

It is a better animal than most people know. The males build tents. A male can spend more than two months chewing through the veins of a palm frond or a large leaf until it collapses into a roof, and then he lives under it. They feed by sucking the juice and pulp out of small fruits, and they pollinate and disperse seed for bananas and mangoes among others, which is a real job in a tropical forest even while orchard growers are calling them pests.

And the wing is why people buy one. A bat wing is a hand: five digits, not four. The thumb stays short and free along the leading edge with a proper claw on it, and the other four stretch out long and carry the membrane between them, so you can read the finger bones straight through it. Fruit bats like this one have a second claw, on the index finger, which most bats do not. Nothing else you can put on a shelf makes a hand that legible.

Good to Know

Approximately 5 inches long by 2 wide, wings folded, face down. Natural specimen, so each one differs; yours will be similar to the photograph rather than identical. Extremely delicate. The wings tear about as easily as a butterfly's, so handle it by the frame or the mount and not by the membrane, and keep it out of direct sun and away from damp. No international shipping.

Try It With

The rest of the oddities is where this one lives, and bone jewelry is the wearable end of the same shelf. More in home decor.