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ABOARD THE MV POLAR PRINCE — Its name is reminiscent of steamy South American jungles. But through determination and an amazingly swift flight, the Brazilian free-tailed bat has made its way to Salt Spring Island — a Canadian first — and in doing so is also shedding light on climate change.

Participants on the final leg of the Canada C3 150-day, 23,000-kilometre voyage around Canada’s three coastlines learned of the medium-sized bat during a series of presentations Thursday by Salt Spring islanders.

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“I don’t think anyone’s seen it,” John Borst, president of Salt Spring Island Conservancy, said in an interview. “But the bat experts were listening to it and said, ‘I haven’t heard that one before.'”

A paper published in the journal Northwestern Naturalist and available online in BioOne notes that the Brazilian free-tailed bat is a “fast long-distance flyer,” previously recorded in southern Idaho, Oregon, and South Dakota, but never Canada. Climate change is a theory behind the bat’s expansion north.