Way again within the late Nineteen Seventies, I usually used to face out on the balcony of our fourth-floor flat in Bombay at nightfall and await the squadron of fruit bats – aka flying foxes – hanging from an enormous peepal tree rising within the backyard. There could be some querulous chittering, then the bats hanging in direction of the highest of the tree (like so many damaged umbrellas) would take off, shortly adopted by the others. It at all times jogged my memory of a squadron of World Conflict II bombers setting off on a mission to scale back some enemy metropolis to rubble and I puzzled the place they went. So far as I knew there have been few massive fruiting bushes on the highway I lived on – verdant Malabar Hill – so possibly that’s the place they had been headed. (I needn’t have nervous – fruit bats fly greater than 150 km for a good dine-out!)
This 12 months, through the monsoon, I used to be in Goa once more and as soon as extra at nightfall heard the identical querulous chittering – sounding extra ghoulish and quarrelsome than earlier than – and attributed it to the large barn owl that had taken up non permanent residence underneath an awning in an adjoining block. Barn owls have the popularity of scaring the bejesus out of individuals with their repertoire of screeches and shrieks. However then these enormous leathery flapping creatures flew previous the balcony repeatedly and I shortly realised that these had been my outdated mates the fruit bats. This was the breeding season for them, therefore the dangerous angle and language! On a subsequent go to, throughout Diwali, they had been flying round once more, however silently, besides once they crashed into the areca palm exterior my bed room window for a fast top-up of nectar from its flowers. They noisily crash landed after which in whole silence, in a considerably malevolent spidery method made their option to the blooms, shortly drank and left, reminding me of a Method 1 pit cease! I’ve nonetheless to find the place they roost through the day – there are lots of tall bushes round which might present them roosts.
Shut up, what takes you unexpectedly is how massive they’re. Their wingspans might stretch to 1.5 m and so they might weigh 1.6 kg. Their clean leathery wings are hooked up to the edges of their our bodies and their ‘arms’. They together with all others of their clan – massive and small – are the one mammals that may keep sustained flight. There are 13 sorts of fruit bats in India, and I couldn’t inform precisely which they had been (it was darkish!). However they are often black, brown, gray and with yellowish bellies, and most have faces which solely their moms can love.
Fruit bats are nocturnal and can spend the day hanging the other way up from tall bushes, rustling restlessly occasionally. As if feeling chilly (imaginary!) they’ll wrap their wings round their our bodies like cloaks and doze. Like most of us, they’re particularly keen on mangoes and bananas and so unpopular with orchard growers of those bushes, which they’ll raid at evening. However they’ll tuck into as many as 300 sorts of ripe fruit and unfold their seeds far and large, as nicely drink deeply of nectar from flowering crops. This was one purpose they had been thought of to be vermin however have now been given a modicum of safety underneath the Wildlife Safety Act 1972, underneath Schedule II. Their populations are stated to be declining – with outright looking and habitat destruction being the most important causes. It has been discovered that as a lot as 70 per cent of bat guano comprises the seeds of the banyan tree – a keystone species, generally known as the kalpavriksh, with out which few tropical jungles might survive.
If it weren’t for fruit bats we in all probability might kiss goodbye to mangoes and bananas and a number of different fruit, which they pollinate so they’re fairly necessary cogs within the ecological ecosystem. Whereas mama bat does take care of her child nicely, each dad and mom are outrageously adulterous and haven’t any qualms about it. They’ve extraordinarily scandalous intercourse lives which might upset the feelings of many, so maybe it’s higher that you simply examine this out your self in that case inclined!
Simply probably the most severe legal cost levied towards fruit bats is that they (together with most different bats) are carriers of a number of very disagreeable and harmful viruses: rabies, Nipah, Zika, dengue, yellow fever and suchlike. This has prompted total colonies of bats to be destroyed in areas the place these illnesses happen. In actuality, there’s not a lot to worry for us catching these illnesses from the bats, except we stand up too shut and private with them. Within the case of the Nipah virus, it’s thought that it’d unfold from bats to people by way of the sap of the date palm, which is tapped in small conical containers tied to the bushes, which the bats might take a sip or two of earlier than we harvest them.
In contrast to others of their variety, they don’t use echolocation to search out their prey – actually they don’t need to, mangoes and bananas can’t fly away – and as a substitute depend on their wonderful evening imaginative and prescient. And actually, their darkish glowing eyes are maybe their most tasty function on their screwed up, mouse-like faces!
Whereas flapping shut previous you they’ll for positive provide the heebie-jeebies however bear in mind these are the one mammals able to sustained flight over lengthy distances and so deserve a substantial amount of respect! We’d like Boeings and Airbuses!
