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May 17, 2024 · fruit bat, any of numerous tropical bat species belonging either to the Old World fruit bats (family Pteropodidae), such as flying foxes, or to fruit-eating genera of the American leaf-nosed bats (family Phyllostomidae), especially those of the genus Artibeus (see Jamaican fruit bat).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
They are also called fruit bats, Old World fruit bats, or—especially the genera Acerodon and Pteropus—flying foxes. They are the only member of the superfamily Pteropodoidea , which is one of two superfamilies in the suborder Yinpterochiroptera .
- 4 Incredible Facts!
- Scientific Name
- Evolution
- Species
- Appearance
- Behavior
- Habitat
- Predators and Threats
- Reproduction and Life Cycle
- Population
The bat is an exquisitely talented flyer. In fact, it is the only mammalfully capable of flight.These bats have an unfortunate tendency to incubate viruses and other diseases.While the fossil record of the fruit bat is sparse, genetic analysis reveals that the ancestor of all fruit bats probably evolved more than 30 million years ago.One of the more amazing facts is that fruit bats play an important role in their local ecosystem by dispersing undigested seeds or pollen throughout the environment. Some plants have even evolved u...The scientific namefor the family of fruit bats is Pteropodidae (this is derived from a combination of Latin words that roughly translate to mean “wing-foot” in English). This family is also sometimes known as megabats, flying foxes, and Old World fruit bats. However, it is possible to define fruit bats more broadly than this. It can mean basically...
Regardless of their size, bats have an undeserved bad reputation. Apart from being linked with vampires, they are wrongfully labeled as “flying rats” and accused of transmitting zoonotic illnesses to humans. Despite this fear, it’s remarkable that bats are the sole mammals to possess the ability of powered flight, and they have been soaring in the ...
The Old World Pteropodidae family contains more than 170 different species across 42 different genera. The largest genus is known as Pteropus, which contains some 59 species alone, including the Indian flying fox, Rodrigues flying fox, the little red flying fox of Australia, and many others scattered throughout the Pacific Islands. Other well-known...
Despite being the only mammalcapable of full flight, the fruit bat has many hallmarks of mammalian ancestry, including the long coat of fur and the ability to produce milk. Even the wing membranes are just extended flaps of skin. However, there are many defining features of a fruit bat, such as the relatively large eyes, the simple erect ears, the ...
One of the bat’sdefining traits is their nocturnal nature; they come out at night between the dusk and dawn hours to feed. Fruit bats are no different. Only a few species buck this trend and feed during the day. Many potential reasons have been hypothesized to explain the bat’s nocturnal behavior, but the most likely explanation is that the bat is ...
The tropical or subtropical forests and savannas of the Eastern Hemisphere, spanning between the Eastern Mediterranean and Australia, contain all the fruit bat species from the family of Pteropodidae. A few more species unrelated to this family can be found in Central and South America. More than half of the fruit bats roost in trees; the rest inha...
Besides the threat of natural predators, the three greatest dangers to the fruit bat’s existence are habitat loss (which destroys its roosting site and food sources), deliberate poisoning or shooting by farmers (to prevent them from raiding crops), and overhunting for their meat. Habitat degradation is further exacerbated by the looming threat of c...
The mating strategy is perhaps the most poorly understood aspect of the animal’s behavior, in part because it can vary so much from one species to another. Based on observational studies, we know that many species are fully promiscuous, while others are monogamous. Another mating strategy is polygyny; these bats form large harems consisting of a si...
It is not known how many of these animals are alive today, but the number is likely to be quite substantial, given their wide distribution across Africa and Asia. The IUCN classifies 4 species as extinct, 88 species as least concern, 40 as vulnerable, 13 as near threatened, 15 as endangered, 8 as critically endangered, and 22 as insufficient data. ...
Fruit bats, also known as flying foxes or megabats, are the 197 species of bats that make up the suborder Megachiroptera, found throughout the tropics of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, of which 186 are extant.
Pteropus (suborder Yinpterochiroptera) is a genus of megabats which are among the largest bats in the world. They are commonly known as fruit bats or flying foxes, among other colloquial names. They live in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, East Africa, and some oceanic islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Learn about fruit bats, also known as flying foxes, a group of nocturnal mammals that feed on fruits, nectar, and flowers. Discover their diversity, distribution, behavior, and conservation status in this comprehensive fact sheet.
Jun 14, 2024 · Old World fruit bat, (family Pteropodidae), any of more than 180 species of large-eyed fruit-eating or flower-feeding bats widely distributed from Africa to Southeast Asia and Australia. Some species are solitary, some gregarious .
