HEAD OF THE AFRICAN MEGADERM.
According to Mr. Jerdon, the Lyre Bat frequents old buildings, pagodas, roofs of houses, and caverns, and is very abundant in the innermost chambers of the cave temples of Ellora and Ajunta. The same writer states that it has been known to eat Frogs and fish; indeed, Mr. Blyth also charges it with a particular fondness for Frogs, and says that on quiet evenings the Bats may be distinctly heard crunching the skulls and smaller bones of their amphibious victims.[178]
The other Oriental species, the Cordate Leaf Bat (Megaderma spasma, see [figure]), very nearly resembles the preceding, both in colour and in general characters, but the posterior division of the earlet is larger and more acutely pointed, the nose-leaf, although similar, is shorter, and has the sides convex, and its concave basal disc is considerably larger. This species is an inhabitant of the whole Malayan region, of Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, Ternate, and the Philippine Islands.
THE AFRICAN MEGADERM.[179]
The best known African species (Megaderma frons) is an inhabitant of the west coast of that continent, where it is found in Senegal and Guinea. In this Bat the ears and nasal appendage (see [p. 289]) attain even a greater development than in Megaderma lyra; the earlet is very long, especially the posterior division of it; the ears are united by their inner margin for about half their length; and the fur is of an ashy colour, with a faint yellowish tinge. A second African Megaderma has been described by Professor Peters under the name of Megaderma cor; it is from Egypt, and somewhat resembles M. spasma in the form of its nose-leaf, but in other respects is more nearly related to M. frons.
AFRICAN MEGADERM.
THE DESERT BAT.[180]
At the first glance, the Desert Bat would seem to have but little to do with the Megaderms, but its general organisation is very similar. The nose-leaf—the striking characteristic of the head in the Megaderms—is entirely wanting, unless indeed we may, with Professor Gervais, regard the groove which runs up the face from the nose to the forehead as really representing a sunken nose-leaf. This groove, or furrow, is a deep depression, increasing both in width and depth as it runs backwards, and is of such extent as to leave traces of its existence even on the underlying bones. In its posterior part the floor of the depression is divided lengthwise by a narrow ridge, and its sides are margined, as far back as the eyes, with peculiar horizontal cutaneous appendages. It is thus, evidently, a somewhat different manifestation of the tendency towards a peculiar development of the cutaneous system in the neighbourhood of the nose which we have seen to be characteristic of the Rhinolophidæ and Megaderms, and no doubt subserves the same purpose in the economy of the animal as the external nasal appendages of those Bats.