Santa Cruz Tube-nosed Fruit-bat Nyctimene santacrucis. Original artwork from A Gap in Nature.

1999.
Watercolour and gouache on Arches paper, 600 x 445mm, framed, signed and dated by artist.

Last Record: before July 1892. Distribution: Santa Cruz Group, Solomon Islands.

This bat, with its strange tube-nostrils, is known from a single specimen (a female) which was donated to the Australian Museum, Sydney, in 1892. It belongs to a genus of fruit-eating bats that has its distribution centred on New Guinea. The precise number of species of tube-nosed bats is still unclear, as some populations seem to grade into others. Nevertheless, up to four species can co-exist in certain parts of New Guinea. The single known specimen is one of the largest tube-nosed bats on record with a wingspan of around forty centimetres.
The Santa Cruz group of islands-which are the southernmost of the Solomon Islands-marks the easternmost limit of the genus' distribution. The largest island in the group is Ndende. Despite several expeditions there, including those equipped to detect such bats in the 1980s, the Santa Cruz tube-nosed fruit-bat has never been seen since. Many members of its genus prefer primary forest, and it seems possible that forest destruction caused its downfall.