New Zealand Short-Tailed Bats: Mystacinidae - Diet

New Zealand short-tailed bats eat a broad range of foods. They are omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals, which is unusual in bats. Their diet includes flying and resting arthropods, animals without a backbone with jointed legs and segmented bodies, fruit, nectar, and pollen. The bat has a relationship with a rare and parasitic plant, called woodrose, or pua reinga. The flower produces nectar on the forest floor. As the bats move around eating the nectar they pollinate the plants. New Zealand short-tailed bats are the woodrose's only pollinator. Researchers have also observed New Zealand short-tailed bats sometimes feeding on birds and carrion, animals that have already been killed.