New Bats for 2020 (Patreon)

The bat section of The Big Book is sizeable, because the bat fossil record is pretty sizeable too. In view of that, I've been thinking that I really should draw more bats. Over recent days I've opted to draw more members of the vesper bat lineage. Conventionally, these bats were all placed in the same one giant family (Vespertilionidae), but recent studies have led to the idea that some of the oldest lineages within the group - bent-winged bats, cistugo bats and so on - should be recognised as their own families. I also want more illustrations for the main lineages within Vespertilionidae proper, since it's still a huge group. In fact, I eventually opted to create illustrations for all the main lineages on this cladogram (produced for TetZoo and used there in my lengthy vesper bat series)...

At the moment, I have a bent-winged bat and long-eared bat, but new for today are the four bats you see at the top of this post:  the two grounded bats are a Cistugo bat at left, and a tube-nosed bat at right. The flying bats are a woolly bat (specifically, the Butterfly or Painted bat Kerivoula picta) and a Myotis bat. All of these images are redrawn from photos. Only a hairy-tailed bat, house bat, pallid bat, perimyotine, serotine, hypsugine and noctule to go, and perhaps a pipistrelle as well. Should be fun :)

I also inserted the four new bats into the giant building bat montage - designed to occupy a whole page in The Big Book - and here's how it's looking right now....

Thanks as ever for your support, I continue to soldier on with this project, man do I want it finished.