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We are located in the Philippines and a bat comes in every night and leaves this seed. We’re really curious what kind of seed is this. Can anyone help?enter image description here

Edit: half inch to 1 inch is the size

Warren Gojar
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  • Warren, welcome! Could you please [edit] your post with details of how long this seed is? Thanks! – Stephie Aug 30 '18 at 13:49
  • Welcome from me too! In addition to the length of the seeds, can you give us more information please? Can you break it open and post a picture? Is it soft and squishy, or hard? Does it smell? Have you seen it on any of your local trees or plants? Do the bats live nearby? How many do they leave? Our [guidelines](https://gardening.stackexchange.com/tags/identification/info) explain why we ask so many questions! Since you're new, check out our [help]. [Ask] is a good starting point. If you need help with our features, leave us a note and someone will come along! – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL Aug 30 '18 at 21:32

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This looks very much like a coffee bean. The Philippines is a producer of coffee. In this article researchers have found that as bats are pushed out of normal habitat they can start hanging around in coffee plantations. Compare to a regular coffee bean and see if you see similarities; unroasted is preferred to compare size because roasting reduces moisture content.

Upd: For details on coffee bean size, see for example this article from Brazil. Now that we have a size of the seed, one inch would be overly large for a coffee bean but half inch would be a large bean.

Colin Beckingham
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  • I thought it looked like a coffee bean too, but with no scale, it's difficult. – Tim Nevins Aug 30 '18 at 19:16
  • Maybe civet *bat* coffee [bean](http://www.most-expensive.coffee/) ;-) – benn Sep 01 '18 at 10:16
  • See for example [Bats as seed dispersers and reforesters](http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/why_bats_matter.html); a one inch seed (inside a 1.5" fruit?) in a bat? Takeoff problems - overweight... – Colin Beckingham Sep 01 '18 at 10:55
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It is a wild guess because it is almost impossible to identify a plant by its seed only, but it looks like a palm seed. Something like Phoenix canariensis or canary palm. Or other palm species from the Phoenix genus. Do you have them in the neighborhood? Here an example of the seeds.

You could of course try to germinate it and see what plant it produces.

benn
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  • @ b.nota, Hmm, nice research! It looks more like palm than a coffee bean to me. In Warren Gojar's photo, I am missing the very flat surface which contains the groove in the coffee bean. Hard to be sure, but the surface of this seed gives the impression of even curvature all around - no flat side. – Lorel C. Aug 31 '18 at 02:13
  • Peaberry coffee beans (single seed in the berry, 10-15% occurrence) have no flat side. – Colin Beckingham Sep 01 '18 at 07:21