I am currently editing my bat photos and choosing among the 40 bat movies I took at the Bat Zone facility at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan. With luck, I should be able to post some nice movies showing bat behavior, including their echolocation “clicks” made audible with a bat-o-meter. In the meantime, here’s a sociable quartet of flying foxes hanging in a bat cage (thanks to the genial boss, Rob Mies, we were allowed inside the cage):
I love flying foxes; they are so cute.
Quartet i think, not a trio. I love bats.
Yep, I missed one. Fixed, thanks.
I can’t quite decide whether they’re cute, or terrifying.
Those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive characteristics.
They are cute. I couldn’t get enough of them when I when I visited Cairns, Australia. I went out everyday and watched them in the trees.
You always hear “rats with wings,” but they look more like demented Chihuahuas with wings.
How big are they? I can’t tell.
Bats again!
I beg of you, please stop feeding my rabies phobia…please…
Vaal
Holy guano Batman! Are there several species of flying fox or is there sexual dimorphism in the coat? The ones I’ve seen had a beautiful reddish-brown coat like a fox and a dark brown coloring of the head, tail, and limb extremities.
There are over 60 species in the genus Pteropus>/i> alone, and the wiki lists 186 extant species in seven subfamilies of Pteropodidae. That’s a lot more than I thought! Having lived near several hilltops in different places that one species or another uses to navigate in their migrations from roost to feeding grounds, the other day I was briefly deceived by a squabbling flock of Carnaby’s cockatoo in a pine tree.
Dammit, close italics.