Our tiny bats in Aotearoa New Zealand are the size of a thumb and weigh the amount of an AA battery.

Two indigenous bat species have been identified as present in, or near, Otago: the pekapeka-tou-roa, long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) and the pekapeka-tou-poto, southern lesser short-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata tuberculata).

Our bats are nocturnal (active at night) and use very high-pitched sounds (called echo-location that is mostly above the range of human hearing) to navigate. The sounds they make are reflected back, and they use these reflections to locate and avoid objects in their path and to hunt.

Our bats also have small bodies and relatively large wings, perfect for squeezing many bats into a roost and for flying in forests. Unusually for bats, the lesser short-tailed bat  is also agile on the ground, often foraging for food on the forest floor by using its folded wings as limbs.

A third indigenous bat species is regionally extinct, the greater short-tailed bat (Mystacina robusta).

The greater short-tailed bat and lesser short-tailed bat are the only remaining examples of the Mystacina family of bats in the world.

Māori folklore refer to bats as pekapeka and associate them with the mythical, night-flying bird, hōikioi, which foretells death or disaster.

Two bat species were identified as present in, or near, the Otago region: the pekapeka-tou-roa, the long-tailed bat, and pekapeka-tou-poto, the southern lesser short-tailed bat.

In Otago the pekapeka-tou-roa/long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) was assessed as Regionally Critical, the most severely threatened status, and the pekapeka-tou-poto/southern lesser short-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata tuberculata) was assessed as Regionally Data Deficient, due to information lacking so that an assessment was not possible. While the southern lesser short-tailed bat could potentially be present in the Otago region, based on records less than 2 km from the western boundary of Otago and the bat’s flight range, there are no recent records of it in our region.

An additional species, the greater short-tailed bat (Mystacina robusta) was identified as Regionally Extinct. This species has been assessed as Data Deficient in the NZTCS, because it has not been seen since 1967, with this happening outside Otago, although anecdotal reports have occurred more recently from outside the region.

ORC completed the first regional conservation status of bats in 2023, in conjunction with a panel of bat experts from DOC (Moira Pryde), Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society (Catriona Gower), and independent consultants (Dr Gillian Dennis and Dr Ian Davidson-Watts).

Bat threat assessment link

Bat searchable species spreadsheet link

Bat searchable threatened species link

Bat searchable regionally extinct species link

Specified highly mobile fauna link