Last year, the pandemic prevented a count, so its fate was unknown. But it vanished in December 2019 and was missing when members of Sussex Bat Group returned in January and February 2020. Since 2002, the bat-the size of a small rabbit, with a wingspan stretching in flight to nearly half a meter-has spent winters clinging to the cool bricks of the tunnel. The bat’s reappearance in December for its 20th winter has astounded its guardians, because of the animal’s great age, but also because it was missing, assumed dead, for nearly two years.
Scientists don’t like to apply emotive adjectives to animals, but if ever there were a lonesome creature, it would be this greater mouse-eared bat.
In a dank, disused railway tunnel in West Sussex hangs a brown, furry parcel, the sole known representative of Britain’s rarest mammal. This piece was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration.
