The greater mouse-eared bat is a large bat found in western, central and southern Europe and Asia Minor.
It is the largest Myotis bat, with a long, broad snout and ears and short, dense brown and gray fur.
At Orlova Chuka cave in northeastern Bulgaria, researchers tagged 34 post-lactating female greater mouse-eared bats with devices recording sound and movement. The bats traveled from the roost or release sites to feeding grounds and returned before dawn. Their recorded behavior included both aerial hunting and picking prey from the ground.
On an average night, a bat captured 25 small aerial insects and 29 larger ground prey. Capture success was 76% in the air and 30% on the ground, but ground prey were three to 20 times larger and supplied 85% of nightly food intake. For seven GPS-tagged bats, gleaning success was 48% in open fields and 12% in forest.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Around a colony in northeastern Bulgaria, seven GPS-tagged bats had greater success gleaning prey in open fields than in forest: 48% versus 12% for foraging bouts with more than two attacks. Maintaining open foraging areas alongside woodland around the roost may support this local feeding pattern.