A new genus of bat has been discovered in South Sudan, the world's newest country. The strikingly striped bat has been placed into the genus Niumbaha , which means "rare" or "unusual" in the Zande language of the region. A paper describing the bat was published this week in the journal ZooKeys .This actually isn't the first time the bat has been seen, but it is the first time that scientists have observed it since 1939. Back then it was identified as Glauconycteris superba. That designation was incorrect, according to DeeAnn Reeder, associate professor of biology at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, and Adrian Garside, a program officer with Fauna and Flora International (FFI), who rediscovered the bat in South Sudan's Bangangai Game Reserve. The researchers carefully studied the specimen they caught and compared it with other known bats. "Literally everything you look at doesn't fit" the previous species designation, Reeder said in a prepared statement . "It's so unique that we need to create a new genus." [More]














Source: Beautiful Striped Bat Identified as Entirely New Genus