Thinking about Flying Foxes today...

The first time Trish and I visited Queensland, Australia, we were on a long hike around a huge park in Cairns, and I looked up to see dozens of huge birds flying into the park. These things had broad wings than spanned well over a meter. Then I realized they weren’t birds at all—they were bats. To be more specific, they were flying foxes (FIRST PHOTO). Needless to say, I was jumping up and down in my excitement.

Anyway, hundreds of them flew into a city park and roosted in the trees for the night. I was so enthralled with these creatures that I have included rather monstrous versions of huge bats in two of my novels, Profusion and Hostile Emergence. Those creatures are kind of scary, but real flying foxes are remarkably… well, cute.

Flying foxes are in the group of bats called fruit bats (mostly in the genus, Pteropus). Take a look at the face of just about any flying fox and you'll understand how they got their name. They have very fox-like faces.

There are about 60 species of flying foxes, and they are widely spread throughout the subtropics of Asia, Australia, East Africa, and many islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. One thing that distinguishes flying foxes from other bats is that they eat fruit, pollen, nectar, or flowers. This means they have to live in areas that have flowers and fruit to eat year-round (tropical). Also, these bats do not have echolocation (sonar) to help them catch insects. Instead, they have very well-develop eyesight and smell. Like many other bats, they hang upside down (SECOND PHOTO).

Of course, flying foxes are the largest bats in the world. Some have a wingspan of five feet (1.5 meter)!

Some flying fox species are rare, partly because they are simply not very prolific. In fact, the large flying fox (yes, that’s its name) usually has only one pup (I love that they're called pups), and that's after a gestation period of 180 days! And then it takes 3-4 months for the pup to be weaned, and it won't be sexually mature for about two years.

And… flying foxes mate while they are hanging upside down. This seems awkward. And I guess I could add that the males often have a penis that is one-fourth the length of his entire body. So, are you starting to see the logistical problems involved here?

Flying foxes hang out (literally) in trees in massive groups called camps. Sometimes these camps can have several hundred thousand bats. But this isn't nearly as many as they used to have before their numbers were depleted. In the 1930s, there were camps that were four miles wide and had 30 million flying foxes.
(PHOTO THREE).

Photo credits:
Flying fox #1 - DepositPhotos 
Flying Fox #2 - hanging - DepositPhotos
Flying foxes #3 - group - DepositPhotos