The pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) that made headlines (and this blog) in Germany last November, after the Chemisches und Veterinäruntersuchungsambt (CVUA-Stuttgart) reported its find in a box of breakfast cereals, is in the news again. The mummified insectivore is now a registered specimen (NMR 9990- 03109) in the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
The museum’s curator, Kees Moeliker, requested the bat from the German authorities, hoping to put it on display next to the museum’s other dead-animals-that-tell-a-story or are famous otherwise. To the curator’s joy, the bat – now know as the Breakfast Bat or ‘Früstücksvleermuis’ in German/Dutch lingo – was donated to the museum together with his last excrements and a nice sample of the original breakfast cereals.
The ensemble is now on display in the museum, next to the newborn mouse that was found in a bag of crisps and the first-ever preserved peanut butter trapped mouse from the Dutch Parliament Building.
The Breakfast Bat is the first foreign addition to the famous-dead-animal collection of the Rotterdam museum. It all started with the necro-duck (1995) and the Domino Sparrow (2005).