Straw-Colored Fruit Bat

Straw-colored fruit bats mostly eat fruit like dates, mangoes, and passion fruit. Sometimes, they also eat the flowers of fruit trees. A bat uses its sharp teeth to cut the skin of the fruit and its long tongue to pull out the soft part. They drink the juice and spit out the tough parts. Besides eating fruit, these bats sometimes chew on wood and bark to get water. Fruit bats do not hunt moving prey, so they do not use echolocation to find their way. Instead, the straw-colored fruit bat uses its eyes and nose to find food. It can fly up to 55 miles each night in search of food.

At the Zoo, fruit bats eat a variety of fruits and vegetables: sweet potatoes, greens, grapes, bananas, melon, and apples. Chopped produce is regularly provided in bowls, while larger pieces of fruit are hung to encourage natural feeding behaviors. 

The straw-colored fruit bat is the most widely distributed African fruit bat. They can be found throughout Africa and the southwest Arabian Peninsula, including the island of Madagascar. These bats migrate through a large part of southern Africa, south of Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique. 

This species is highly adaptable and can be found in many different habitats, from tropical rainforests to grassy savannas. Their primary habitat is tropical forests where food is plentiful. The species can survive in areas altered by people and is often seen in cities, such as in wooded parks.

These bats typically roost in tall trees, but have also been found in caves. 

There is not a lot of information about what animals eat straw-colored bats, but scientists think owls, eagles, snakes, buzzards, and civets might hunt them.

Major threats include habitat loss and hunting. In some places, people hunt them for food or use them in traditional medicine. People also fear diseases from bats, which has led to their numbers dropping even further. Because of their loud chatting and strong-smelling guano (bat poop) when gathered in large numbers, people sometimes shoot them, burn tires to drive them out, or cut down trees where they roost. 

Named after the yellow or straw-colored fur that circles their necks, these bats come in colors ranging from pale yellow to dark brownish-grey. Their heads are large and pointed, with no white markings on their faces. Their eyes are large and, unlike bats that eat insects, they rely on their vision instead of echolocation to locate food. Based on their heightened sense of smell, they can distinguish between ripe and unripe fruit.  The furless wings are used for gliding and flying, protection from the weather, and fanning when temperatures rise to regulate their body temperature. 

Male bats are mature enough to mate at one year old, females at two. Mating season occurs from April to June, but the female bat does not implant the fertilized embryo for further development until months later. This process is called "delayed implantation." This ensures births coincide with the wettest season, when fruit is most abundant. Gestation lasts nine months, but embryo development takes only four. Most births produce a single offspring; twins are rare.

The young are born fully furred, with their eyes open, and weigh about one-third of their mother's weight. The baby bat spends the first few days of life clinging to its mother's fur and feeding on her milk. As the baby grows bigger, the mother will no longer be able to carry it while flying, and it will have to stay in the nursery colony while the mothers go out to forage for food each night. Even though there may be millions of bats in a nursery colony, each mother will find her individual baby by smell and sound. Mothers nurse their young for 2 to 3 months, and young bats should be fully weaned by 5 months. The males do not help raise the young. 

During flight, these large bats tend to remain silent. During feeding and roosting, they can be quite noisy and communicate with loud vocalizations. Grooming is considered a social activity and can express familiarity and affection. 

Straw-colored bats are highly social and roost together in large groups called colonies. Although they feed at night, they remain active during the day while resting within the roost. Some colonies are huge, with as many as half a million bats, but most have between 100,000 and 1 million. These bats return to the same areas to find food each season and migrate when food becomes scarce.  

They fly in straight lines and higher in the sky than most other fruit bats.