Weight: 20-35 grams

Distribution:

Southcentral British Columbia to central Mexico.

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[Spectrograph]

Ecology and Behavior:

Common in arid regions with rocky outcroppings, particularly near water. This gregarious species usually roosts in small colonies of 20 or more individuals in rock crevices and buildings, but occasionally it roosts in caves, mines, piles of rocks, and in tree cavities. Relative to other bats, pallid bats emerge from roosts relatively late, but the time of evening emergence varies seasonally. Mothers and offspring may emerge and forage together. Pallid bats walk on the ground with a variety of strides and gaits, and they can hover or glide momentarily.

Food Habits:

Chiefly feeds on large (2-7 centimeters or 1-3 inches, in length) prey that is taken on the ground or, perhaps less frequently, in flight within a few meters of the ground or from the surfaces of vegetation. Prey items include flightless arthropods such as scorpions, crickets, and solpugids, ground-roving insects such as darkling ground beetles, scarab beetles, predacious ground beetles, carrion beetles, and short-horned grasshoppers, and prey that are gleaned from vegetation, including cicadas, katydids, preying mantids, long-horned beetles, and sphingid moths. Pallid bats also are known to eat lizards and rodents.

Reproduction and Longevity:

One or two babies are born in May or June. Females hang upright during parturition, and newborns are held in the curled interfemoral membrane.

Status of Populations:

Common.

Text, in its original form, provided by T. L. Best, M. J. Harvey, and J. S. Altenbach. Printed spectrographs provided by M. J. O'Farrell. Distribution maps, call descriptions, and AnaMusic sound clips produced by W. L. Gannon. Accounts assembled by T. C. Sanchez-Brown.