Flying Fox

04/13/2020

A bit about them

Flying foxes are almost pretty much exactly what they sound like... foxes that grew wings. Well at least some of them look like that could be the case! Bad news for the walking fox, but a flying fox is a much more interesting animal. With some extremely light arms and hands, this is the only mammal capable of true flight. This nifty little trick would you, believe it, makes him a gardener of sorts.

Common Name

Flying Fox

Fruit bat

Scientific Classification

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Chiroptera
Family: Pteropodidae
Genus: Pteropus
Species: Poliocephalus

Binomial Nomenclature

Pteropus poliocephalus

Closely related to/Family tree

Bats!
(Technically flying foxes are bats, but not like those small black ones that everyone knows turn into vampires!)

Status

Mixed.
32% of the 60 extant flying fox species are listed as Vulnerable.

3 species critically endangered and 7 endangered.

The rest are safely positioned above vulnerable.

History

6 species made extinct recently from over hunting.

Range

They can be found in and around Tropical/sub-tropical and temperate forests and Savannah.

Inhabiting anywhere within the above highlighted red area, they can also inhabit small islands or atolls.

Of the 60 species in the genus, 4 are found in Australia:

Grey-headed flying fox (North Queensland to southern Victoria)

Spectacled flying fox (North Queensland)

Little red flying fox (North Queensland)

Black flying fox (North Queensland, Northern territory, Northern Western Australia)

Appearance

Coincidentally, flying foxes have a Fox-like face. Quite often a dark face, small ears with large beady eyes. Their large eyes are well adapted for low light navigation, advantageous to their crepuscular lifestyle. Depending on the species, their eyes can be brown, orange or even red! Most species are however colourblind.

Bats are characterised by having a hook extruding from their thumbs to grapple onto branches and each other, flying foxes are lucky in that they also have a hook on their second digit.
Their third digit is usually the longest and the pinky is stretched backwards; combined, these two fingers account for the tautness of the patagium (The fancy name for the skin that makes up their wings)

They also have a reduced Uropatagium (Flap of skin between hind limbs) and tail.

The largest (Great Flying Fox) can weigh up to 1.45Kg with a wingspan of 1.7m however not all are large as some (Spotted-winged fruit bat) weigh only 14.2g and have a wingspan shorter than a ruler (28cm).

Habitat

Tropics and subtropics of Asia, Australia and some islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

They are most commonly found in Sclerophyll forests and woodlands

They go about sleeping by hanging upside down like a true bat and can be found sleeping in trees, caves or human structures including mines. They can roost in numbers ranging from 10 to 10's of thousands and gregarious groups will often return to the same roosting area for several years, claiming their favourite trees.

Feeding style

Frugivorous, nectivorous, folivorous and insectivorous.
Basically they're Generalists and will eat most of what they can get their hands on.

Their most common food sources come from products of these plants; Eucalyptus, Melaleuca and Banksia pollen and flowers.

They aren't adapted to high-fibre diets and this enables their super quick digestion rate.

An important role for these guys is to be Seed dispersers and pollinators. Often flying 40-60km for food and back again, the seeds and pollen they gather as they eat can be dropped anywhere along the way, encouraging the spread of all the plant species they consume.

Predators

Humans are by far the biggest threat to flying foxes.(Over hunting, trapped in fruit tree nets, electrified on powerlines, Bushmeat, traditional medicine.)

Many of these little guys like to hang out in coastal areas at low altitudes, and as such Climate change, sea level rise and deforestation are forcing them to move further inland after loosing their homes.

Some more natural predators do exist however. Snakes, Monitors, cats and rats all have their fair go at a winged snack.

Habits/behaviours

Gregarious (social) creatures that communicate by sound (Sometimes even developing dialects based on different colonies) and and smell using scents from glands on their shoulders.

They've also been observed to enjoy amorous activities for reasons other than procreation including same sex fellatio and prostitution for food.

Cool tricks

Digestion times of half an hour or less! High densities of micro villi in their intestines help absorb nutrients quickly.

They can see better in low light conditions than the common house cat and have a sense of smell far greater than that of a dogs. Some can even see odour in 3D (stereo olfaction).

Flying foxes have the largest brain to body size ratio of all the bats, with a value (1.20) similar to that of domestic dogs.

When they feel like showing off, flying foxes can fly up to 31 Km/h.

Disease

Flying foxes, like most bats have a bad reputation for carrying and transmitting diseases, some of which are zoonotic.

They can transmit Lyssavirus (ABLV) and rabies, Hendra Virus and Nipah virus and Ebola Virus.

Conservation

I recommend checking out these guys as they have a pretty good handle on how important a flying fox is to its ecosystem.

https://littleaussiebat.com.au/