Re: Is there a specific name for a scientist who studies bats?

David,

Those are good names -- but why not call a scientist who studies bats, a "Bat man"? Of course, his assistant could be called Robin.

Okay, I agree - that was just a little bit too corny.

You did some good homework, searching the web and not finding any official names - I did the same thing just to make sure, and as far as I could tell, scientists who study bats are most often referred to as... (drumbeat please)....... bat scientists.

Here are just a few sites where that term was used (you can search within each site for the term "bat scientist":
http://www.bonairenature.com/bats/Accomplishments.html
http://www.batcon.org/home/brazil2001/
http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/ap/aug99/ap-bat-search082999.asp

Anyway, bat scientist is not really an official term for a scientist who studies bats, but rather a term that the journalists coined because scientists don't generally identify branches of science to that level of detail, as you surmised.

-Eric Maass

Admin note
Bats belong to the family Chiroptera (in greek, chiro means "hand" and ptera means "wing", so literally "hand-wing" - sounds like a good description of a bat to me!). So, strictly speaking bat researchers should be called chiropterists. I ran this search, and as you can see, there are a few references to that word.
-Rob Campbell, MADSCI admin