Odd-colored creature seen falling from tree turns out to be first-of-its-kind sighting
In a rainforest of central Belize, a wildlife ranger saw an oddly colored animal fall out of a tree. The fleeting glimpse sparked a larger search project — and revealed a first-of-its-kind sighting.
Mark Faux, a field technician, visited Toucan Ridge Ecology and Education Society research station in March 2023 for a trail-cleaning project. While there, he saw a “small group” of bats “falling to the ground” when their roost “was cut,” according to a study published Feb. 13 in the peer-reviewed journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation.
One of the bats looked “completely white,” an unusual color for the animal, so Faux reported the sighting to wildlife rangers at the station.
Intrigued, the rangers decided to track down the oddly colored animal and, later that year, they succeeded, the study said.
The team found a colony of Thyroptera tricolor, or Spix’s disc-winged bats, with a “leucistic adult male,” the study said. A photo shows the white bat inside its typical roost, a specific type of “rolled” up leaf.
Spix’s disc-winged bats normally have “dark brown fur” with some “reddish brown” patches and a lighter underside, but this bat had “uniform white” fur, researchers said.
“Although chromatic (color) disorders are widely reported in the animal kingdom, few reports of true leucism have been published in Neotropical bats,” the study said. “Our observations represent the first documented case of leucism in Spix’s disc-winged bat or any chromatic disorder in the Thyropteridae (disc-winged bat) family.”
Leucism is often confused with albinism. Albino animals lack pigment in their fur and have eyes which “appear red,” the study said. Leucistic animals also lack pigment in their fur, but their “eyes retain their normal color.”
Later, in April 2024, rangers documented another sighting of a male Spix’s disc-winged bat with leucism. Researchers suspect all three sightings are “the same individual moving between” roosting locations but don’t know for sure.
A close-up photo shows the pale Spix’s disc-winged bat, which has “adhesive discs” for hands and feet. The bat was fully grown and part of a close-knit colony, indicating its odd coloring had “potentially little effect” on its survival and socialization, the study said.
Spix’s disc-winged bats are considered vulnerable in Belize “due to its restricted distribution and specific roosting requirements,” researchers said. Their main threats include “climate change and localized commercial harvesting of Heliconia leaves (their preferred roost) for tamales.”
Belize is a coastal country in Central America, bordering Mexico to the north and Guatemala to the south and west.
The research team included Vanessa Martin, Vanessa Kilburn, Mathieu Charette and Bruce Miller.
