PICTURE GALLERY - Fruit Bats in Empangeni

Enquiry & Photos by Wilma Swan, Empangeni, Kwa Zulu Natal

Answer by Nigel Fernsby

 4th & 5th April 2006. Wilma Swan

• 'Here are two pictures of the bats that have taken residence under the eave of my roof, there were 7,  2 days ago now we have 8.  
• Please can you identify them from the pictures?  
• Would they live in a bat house?
• And which type of bat house? 
• Their eyes appear to be open during the day don't they sleep with them closed?
• We have to put new gutters on our roof shortly, and this will disturb our bats what do you suggest I do to safeguard our bats??
• I have been doing some research as well and found a picture of a bat that resembles the ones under my eaves in "Chris and Tilde Stuart's field guide to the mammals of Southern Africa" .   According to the picture in the book it is either a  "Wahlberg's Epauletted fruit bat or a Peters's Epauletted fruit bat,"  I decided on the Wahlbergs as it is more in our area!'

25 April 2006. Wilma Swan

'I am most perturbed as I seem to have lost 2 of my bats, there are only 6 still roosting under my eaves!!'
 

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	'They are roosting under the eave of an east facing wall. I tried to take a photo of them all leaving, but only managed this!!! The speck against the wall is a bat !!!  It was taken at about 6pm, there were also a couple of small bats flying around at the time'. Wilma

Answer by Nigel Fernsby. 25 April 2006

Hi Wilma,
 
Thank you for the photos of the Fruit Bats under the eaves of your house in Empangeni. It is an excellent photo and good for identifying the Bats.
 
Your identification seems to be correct from your reference to the Chris and Tilde Stuart Mammal Book. There are two species of these Fruit Bats known in South Africa and it seems that the other species – Gambian (Peter’s) Epauletted Fruit Bat - does not occur as far south as the Wahlberg’s Epauletted Fruit Bat that these appear to be. Where they occur together, it is necessary to open the mouth and look at the palatial ridges at the back of the mouth to identify the species. The Wahlberg’s has one ridge behind the molar teeth while the Gambian has two ridges. But I am far from being an expert on this and I believe that in central Africa it is more complicated with more similar species.
 
Otherwise these two species cannot be identified just by sight as they are very similar in size and there are colour overlaps. But it is not recommended for inexperienced members of the public to try to capture these Bats and to try to identify the species by opening the mouth to check the palatial ridges.
 
You mention that the numbers have reduced where they are roosting under the eaves at your house. This is very typical for the species as they come and go at will according to food supply and social interactions. But these Epauletted Fruit Bats seem to have adapted to using manmade shelters a lot more during the past ten or so years. This would indicate that some populations have become much tamer than previously. The reason is probably that many people have become more tolerant of them leading to less harassment of these Bats where they rest and roost.
 
There is no realistic Bat House for this species of Bats, as they would not use it. Their normal roosting places are under the shade of trees and for them to start roosting in thatched lapas, under the eaves of roofs and under verandahs is quite an adaptation from customary habits.
 
These Bats are voracious feeders on all sorts of fruit from the indigenous wild fruits in the bush to many exotic fruits grown as cash crops or in home orchards. They feed mainly on soft skinned fruit, as they are not well equipped to open fruit with thick or hard skins. But they require great volumes of fruit each night to sustain the great amount of energy required for their flight activity.
 
With just one or two exceptions they are not great raiders of commercial fruit orchards as most of these fruits are picked prior to full ripeness while still green enough to be unpalatable. The fruit then leaves the pack sheds so that the fruit ripening coincides with the delivery of fruit to the marketplace. But these Bats serve the fruit farmers well by devouring the waste, misshapen and over ripe fruit and so help to reduce outbreaks of fruit fly populations. 
 
Also as these Bats eat large quantities of wild forest fruit each night they are the best regenerators of tropical forests as the seeds of the eaten fruit are spread over deforested and slash and burn areas in the Bat’s faeces, leading to the germination of fresh young forest trees. The Fruit Bats are also major pollinators of many valuable forest and economically important cultivated trees, and in some cases are the only pollinators of many species of trees.
 
Fruit Bats have large eyes and can see very well. They navigate by sight and find their fruit by sight or by sense of smell. This means that Fruit Bats, with the exception of the Egyptian Fruit Bats, which roosts in caves by day, do not have echolocation as Insect-eating Bats do.
 
I hope this will give you some useful information about these interesting creatures. I thank you for your concern and interest in them. It is always encouraging to find more and more people taking an interest in these small mammals in contrast to recent years when so many people were quite happy to see the meaningless destruction of Bats.
 
Kind regards,
 
Nigel Fernsby.   

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