den | Rescues: Maddie

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Maddie has become amazingly wild. Usually the bats maintain a level of accepting grumpyness where they are happy to see me, or rather the food, but growl and grumble while they crawl around my hand snuffling for food.

Maddie hunches up in whatever corner she is roosting in and growls. If my fingers get too close, she leaps at them and tries to bite. I have to wear latex gloves near her. To help a bat find the food I usually hunt it by touching it on the bum so they move forward. With Maddie I point at her face and she leaps at my finger. We continue like this until she has frog-hopped to the food.

She's ready to go, but the nights are still too cool. When we start seeing +10C night temperatures I'll hang the tent outside and leave it open.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dewhitton.livejournal.com

Latest research focusing on the way their eyes and brain are wired together, indicates flying foxes may be related to lemures.

As for domestication, the microbats will grow quiet with prolonged handling, but the instant they can get outside they're gone. I know of only one case where the microbat refused to go. Flying foxes are different. When they are hand-reared they have to undergo a prolonged period of acclimatization to get them back into the bush. I met a one-eyed black flying fox (named Nelson!) who has no intention of leaving his keeper, even though he has the run of the house and yard. He was wild-born but is smart enough to knpw where the easy food comes from.

Of course, with little red flying foxes you'd be pressed KEEPING one, let alone getting it quiet enough to feed.

From:

acelightning.livejournal.com

From:

jamesb

Flying Foxes look like someone has grafted large bat wings onto a lemur ... big eyed innocence with demonic appendages.

Personally, I think they're adorable, and I never tire of watching at them feeding on the nuts on the palm trees in my front yard ... even if they do knock some of the palm nuts onto my roof late at night, and crap all over the front of my house.

From:

dewhitton.livejournal.com

It's odd -- microbats raised in captivity are tame and quiet until it's time to leave the roost, when it's like a switch is thrown in their head from "tame baby" to "wild adolescent." They don't domesticate, unlike possums like sugar gliders.

"Microbat" and "Megabat" are misleading. Microbats like Ghost Bats and larger than megabats like blossom bats. In fact, Ghost bats are carnivores that actively prey on the smaller bats. Generally, megabats eat fruit, nectar and pollin, and microbats don't.

Microbats can be insectivores, carnivores, piscavores and sanguivores. which is cool