Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland, rocky areas, and hot deserts.

[3] According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, there are few circumstances in which the author's original spelling can be challenged.

[5] In 1878, George Edward Dobson published that he considered it synonymous with the brown long-eared bat, Plecotus auritus.

[2] Christies' big-eared bat is endemic to north-eastern Africa and it is known only from a small number of sites.

[1] In 1884, English ornithologist Henry Baker Tristram described the species as "very common in all the hill-country of Palestine, especially in caves and tombs about Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and by the Sea of Galilee.