The orange pigment is likely from 'pheomelanin', the same thing that causes red hair color in humans, rather than dietary carotenoids like in some other bats. A ginger bat! A colorful little guy & very Spooky Season themed 🦇🎃! More here: www.inaturalist.org/taxa/40458-K...

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They feed on insects during twilight or nighttime hours & during the day they roost in bird nests, overhangs of huts, or natural clumps of dead vegetation, often in family-based clusters of 3-6. Because they're rare & reclusive, we don't have good estimates of their population growth or stability.

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What could be more Halloween than a BAT? How about a bat colored like a JACK-O-LANTERN? Let's meet the Painted Bat (Kerivoula picta), also called the butterfly bat, native to SE Asia. 🦇🎃 (📷: MerlinTuttle.org)

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Marsupials have often been displaced by placental mammals, but not in certain biomes in South America & Australia where they have occupied a key niche for millions of years. WHY they were so often displaced is another mystery to be solved. Literature has 'whodunits,' science has 'whysitlikethat'.

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There's only one explanation: Monito's ancestors walked from Australia to South America... via Antarctica. A big trip for a little marsupial! But 50 MYA, the three continents were joined. In fact, we think all marsupials originated in what is today China or North America.

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