Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I had a great one because it started with a holiday. I hope everyone had a happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day. I am very excited because something very special happened recently in the bat world!

Scientists have discovered two new dog-faced bat species!!! That’s right! For over 50 years, scientists thought that there were only six species of dog-faced bats. After studying bats found in Panama and Ecuador, they discovered that there were actually eight different species. The two new species are called the Freeman’s dog-faced bat and the Waorani dog-faced bat. And they are adorable!

Dog-faced bats are extremely tricky to capture, seeing as they fly faster than a lot of other bats. Using mist nets, researchers were able to catch 56 Freeman’s dog-faced bats. They didn’t know until later that they had a new species! It’s also tricky to get echolocation recordings of these bats, but the scientists managed to get some. Sadly, they were not able to get recordings of the Waorani dog-faced bat. It was also a bit harder to get catch one of these bats. Their discovery of this bat was based off of physical examinations and comparing the DNA of these bats to the DNA of some of the bats they already had.

If you want to read more about these amazing bats, you can read about them here .