Pallas’s Tube-nosed Bat

Pallas’s tube-nosed bat is a fruit bat named for the short tubular nostrils that project from its muzzle. It is also called the Torresian or northern tube-nosed bat. A systematic review of 142 museum specimens restricted Nyctimene cephalotes to Sulawesi and the Maluku region and described the Sulawesi population as a distinct subspecies. The same work showed that several older island records belonged to other taxa, explaining why broader historical range statements require caution (Kitchener, Packer and Suyanto 1995).

The Australian Museum reports tube-nosed bats assigned to this species roosting in rainforest and mangrove trees and notes fruit and insects in the diet outside Sulawesi. Older records from New Guinea and Timor are uncertain or have been reassigned, and the Mammal Diversity Database currently records the species only from Indonesia. Those taxonomic complications make photographed locality and identification important. No reproductive data or universal body measurements are included here because the opened sources did not clearly separate the Sulawesi form from related island populations (Australian Museum; Mammal Diversity Database).