Download This Sample
This sample is exclusively for KidsKonnect members!
To download this worksheet, click the button below to signup for free (it only takes a minute) and you'll be brought right back to this page to start the download!
Sign Me Up
Table of Contents
Pteropus, a suborder of Yinpterochiroptera, is a megabat genus that includes some of the world’s largest bats. They are also referred to as fruit bats and flying foxes, among other names. At least 60 species of this genus can be found in Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Africa, Australia, and some Pacific and Indian Ocean islands.
See the fact file below for more information on the Flying Fox, or you can download our 34-page Flying Fox worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.
Key Facts & Information
PTEROPUS
COMMON NAME: Little Red Flying Fox
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Pteropus scapulatus
TYPE: Mammals
DIET: Herbivore
GROUP NAME: Camp
SIZE: Wingspan 3 feet
TAXONOMY AND ETYMOLOGY
- The name Pteropus was given by a French zoologist named Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1762. Before 1998, German naturalist Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben was sometimes given genus authority. Although the Brisson publication (1762) predated the Erxleben publication (1777), giving him preference under the Principle of Priority, some authors preferred Erxleben as genus authority because Brisson’s publication did not use binomial nomenclature consistently.
- Brisson’s 1762 publication was deemed a “rejected work” for nomenclatural purposes by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in 1998. Despite rejecting the majority of the publication, the ICZN decided to retain Brisson as an authority and save a dozen generic names from work, including Pteropus.
- Flying foxes are often called fruit bats. They number over 200 species and are found in Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific, but not in Europe or the Americas. They are primarily found in tropical Asia, Australia, Madagascar, and the South Pacific islands. Many species of flying foxes can be found in Southeast Asia. The Malayan flying fox is considered the largest bat in the world. It has the body of a house cat and wingspans of up to five feet.
- Flying foxes frequently prefer to settle in narrow strips of a fragmented forest rather than in large tracts of primary forest. “The bigger species are so large that, in order not to lose too much height in take-off, they beat their wings two or three times to lift their bodies from the vertical to the horizontal and then unlatch their feet,” wrote David Attenborough. Flying foxes are thought to have arrived in Madagascar by island hopping.
TYPES OF FLYING FOX
- There are several kinds of flying foxes all over the world. Here are some of the most famous flying foxes that can be seen by people.
Grey-headed flying fox
- Grey-headed flying foxes have dark grey fur on their bodies, lighter grey fur on their heads, and russet/orange fur around their necks. The leg fur that extends to the ankle distinguishes it from other flying foxes.
Black flying fox
- The black flying fox is almost entirely black, with only a slight rusty red collar and a light silvery grey frosting on its belly. It doesn’t have any fur on its lower legs.
Little red flying fox
- Their fur is reddish-brown, and their wings are more translucent.
Spectacled flying fox
- Spectacled flying foxes get their name from the straw-colored fur around their eyes. Eye rings can sometimes be indistinct and resemble black flying foxes. Individuals’ pale fur on their shoulders may differ.
CHARACTERISTICS
Description:
- Skull – It has a big, bulbous braincase.
- Shoulder – Supports the wings because of their heavy weight.
- Thumb – Only the thumb is membrane-free and is primarily used for grooming and climbing.
- Wrist – The long and delicate bones serve as the framework for the flexible membrane.
- Membrane – The wing membrane is made up of two layers of skin that are generally darkly pigmented and hairless, with blood vessels and nerves running between them.
- Fingers – When the bat is not in flight, some of the fingers, particularly the third, fold over.
- Radius Fused Ulna – The radius and ulna pivot around one another to allow wrist rotation.
- Elbow – joint of the arm
- Humerus – Wing beats in bats are primarily performed by movements of the humerus relative to the shoulder girdle, occupying the caudal-most sector of available shoulder mobility.
Skull and Dentition
- Pteropus skulls are made up of 24 bones: seven for the snout, sixteen for the cranium, and one for the mandible.
- It has a big, bulbous braincase. Flying foxes, like all mammals, have three middle ear ossicles that aid in sound transmission to the brain. After birth, the skulls of flying foxes continue to develop.
- Young flying foxes have very short snouts compared to adults; as they mature, the maxilla elongates, gaining bone between the zygomatic processes and the canine teeth. Puppies of the grey-headed flying fox are born with some milk teeth already present: canines and incisors.
- All of the milk teeth had emerged by nine days old, with a dental formula of 2.1.2.0, 2.1.2.0, and a total of 20 teeth. All of the milk teeth had fallen out and were replaced by permanent teeth by 140 days (4.6 months).
- Canines are typically replaced first, followed by premolars, incisors, and molars.
- The adult dental formula consists of 2.1.3.2, and 2.1.3.3, resulting in 34 teeth. The molars’ occlusal surface is generally smooth but has longitudinal furrows.
Internal Systems
- Flying foxes have large hearts and a relatively fast heart rate: a resting individual’s heart rate ranges between 100 and 400 beats per minute.
- Flying fox digestive tracts are simple; the time between ingestion and excretion can be as short as 12 minutes. They lack a cecum as well as an appendix. The stomach divides into the cardiac and fundic regions.
BEHAVIOR
- Flying foxes sleep upside down in large groups in trees during the day, with their wings folded around them. Several hundred colonies may occupy a single tree, and colonies numbering in the thousands frequently inhabit multiple trees.
- In the early twentieth century, there were reports of flying fox “camps” over 412 miles long and a mile wide, with millions of animals.
- Fruit bats sleep in the open, unlike other bats, which sleep in caves. When they urinate, the urine trickles down their wings onto whatever is beneath them — possibly another bat. One or two flying foxes usually stay awake on the alert for their natural predators, hawks or snakes. When these bats fly away, it alerts others to the danger.
- Each bat requires its own enclosure. Individuals dislike touching other bats. Fruit bats’ squawking is often the sound of bats bickering over space as they move around. The bats leave their roosts at dusk. They can take off together or individually.
- When frightened, fruit bats urinate. “I feel a warm rain, smelling oddly like the New York City subway,” National Geographic photographer Carry Wolinsky said after disturbing a group roosting in a tree. Flying foxes are also known for defecating partially digested fruit all over people when disturbed.
FLYING FOX FEEDING
- Flying foxes primarily consume rainforest fruits, figs, nectar, and blossoms, as well as tropical fruits such as bananas, plantains, breadfruit, and mangoes. Some fruiting plants rely on bats, whose digestive systems process food quickly without disturbing the seeds, to disperse them through the bat’s feces.
- They, like birds and bees, spread pollen in flowering trees. Their long tongues are made for sucking nectar. Pollen adheres to their furry bodies.
- The nomadic habits of flying foxes are frequently determined by their search for food. They will travel great distances to find fruiting trees or nectar-rich blossoms.
- It is not unusual for a bat to fly 60 miles per night from tree to tree in search of food. When normal fruiting and blossoming patterns are disrupted by droughts, fires, or floods, they suffer greatly. That is when they are most likely to attack orchards.
FLYING FOX MATING
- Males of some flying fox species are known as epauletted bats because they have large retractable patches of fur that sprout out of pouches in their shoulders during courtship displays. Female epauletted bats give birth to a single baby once or twice a year, with births closely coinciding with the long and short rains in some areas. But births appear to occur throughout the year in others.
- During the mating season, males of some epauletted bat species congregate near streetlights, flashing patches of normally hidden fur. They secrete attractive odors, singing and honking rhythmically from inflatable sacs in their cheeks and beating their half-closed wings to attract females who appear to require the light to see the males.
- When rivals land on nearby lampposts, the males compete by increasing the frequency of their calls. At around 11:00 p.m., the females arrive and hover about a yard away from the males, inspecting one before moving on to the next. When the female selects the male she desires, her suitor wraps his wings around her so no one can see her.
- Mothers carry their babies with them when they fly out to feed at dusk, even though some young is two-thirds the weight of their mothers and are perfectly capable of flying on their own. The young bat clings to its mother’s breast as it rides. A baby may fly alongside its mother and even compete with her for food at feeding sites. That same baby may then suckle as it is carried home. During the day, nursing babies are cradled beneath their mothers’ wings, invisible except for brief glimpses.
THE FLYING FOX AND HUMANS
Disease Carriers
- Flying foxes have long been considered pests because they make a lot of noise, contaminate water supplies, raid orchards, and generally cause a nuisance. A bounty was placed on their heads in some places. When humans are present, flying foxes frequently squeal in displeasure.
- Three diseases have been discovered in flying fox populations since 1996: Hendra virus, Menangle virus, and Australian Bat Lyssavirus (ABL). They can infect horses, pigs, and humans, and Hendra can be transmitted to humans through contact with infected horses. ABL, a rabies-like virus, can be transmitted directly from bats to humans through a scratch or bite.
Food for Thought?
- Flying foxes are significant in many traditional cultures around the world and are sometimes eaten.
- In Australia, native Aboriginal inhabitants claim that eating flying foxes has medicinal benefits, including the treatment of respiratory problems such as asthma. Cultural uses have come at a high cost in some countries: on the South Pacific island of Guam, populations of local flying foxes have been consumed to near extinction.
- Flying foxes are threatened by similar hunting pressures in many other countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Madagascar.
Political Pawns
- People’s fears about bat-carried diseases, often fueled by anti-bat hysteria in the media, have turned bats into political pawns. Because of disagreements over property development, for example, the animals frequently come up short. The removal of a historical flying fox camp in a patch of rainforest adjacent to a school became a key issue during an election campaign in rural New South Wales.
- The main concern was declared to be a health risk to schoolchildren. The site has now been designated for development. The true motivation of the school was later revealed as its desire to expand its campus into the immediate vicinity of the bat colony.
Pests
- During droughts and shortages of native fruits and blossoms, desperate flying foxes can cause significant damage to fruit orchards. Stone fruit, banana, and lychee growers are the hardest hit. Orchardists use a variety of bat-deterrent strategies to protect their crops, including strong odors such as kerosene (placed in buckets), and shots fired randomly into the air; bright lights reflected through the trees and a variety of loud noises are among the more benign of these.
- Although most fruit growers report some success after implementing new scaring techniques, the desired results rarely last more than a few days. When the bats realize there is no real threat, the deterrents can even backfire, becoming beacons that alert the hungry hordes to the presence of food.
City Slickers
- Flying fox camps are becoming more common in cities and suburbs along Australia’s east coast. This is due to the expansion of human development into the bats’ traditional roosting areas in some areas, and it is the bats’ own choice in others.
- Shrubs and trees in irrigated suburban yards and green spaces provide more reliable food supplies than patchy forest remnants that are frequently subject to drought as natural forests decline.
- Nonetheless, more than 2,500 flying foxes were discovered dead or aborted in suburban Brisbane in September 2000, when no trees or shrubs flowered for several weeks due to drought conditions. This figure is likely only a fraction of the total number of deaths.
Nosy Scientists
- Because studying flying mammals is difficult, much about our winged cousins remains unknown. Scientists have learned important ecological information from radio-tracking studies and have assisted in determining the foraging patterns of each species, including flight distances, food types, and fidelity to specific feeding sites.
- However, the social behavior of flying foxes is still poorly understood.
IN CULTURE
- Many indigenous cultures and traditions include flying foxes. An impatient flying fox begs the Great Spirit to teach him how to be a bird in a folklore Dreamtime story from Australia’s New South Wales North Coast, only to be hung upside down on a branch.
- They were also depicted in Aboriginal cave art, as several surviving examples show.
- Flying foxes are also mentioned in Papua New Guinean folklore. One legend about flying foxes involves a cockatoo stealing feathers from the flying fox, causing it to become nocturnal. Another story involves a flying fox that can transform into a young man; the flying fox kidnaps a woman from her husband and takes her as his wife. According to another legend, a flying fox-man was responsible for introducing yams to their people. Oceanian indigenous societies used flying fox parts as functional and ceremonial weapons. Barbs were made from bone in the Solomon Islands to make spears.
OTHER USES
- In Southeast Asia, flying foxes and other bat species are frequently killed and sold as “mummies.”
- These bats’ mummified bodies or skeletons are frequently shipped to the United States and sold as souvenirs in curiosity shops or online through vendors such as Etsy or eBay.
- Over 100,000 dead bats were imported into the United States between 2000 and 2013. “I’ve seen huge losses, mostly due to various types of over-harvesting, especially at cave entrances, either for food or for sale as mummies,” wrote bat conservationist Merlin Tuttle.
Flying Fox Worksheets
This fantastic bundle includes everything you need to know about the Flying Fox across 34 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about the Flying Fox, a member of a genus called megabats which includes some of the world’s largest bats.
Complete List of Included Worksheets
Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.
- Flying Fox Facts
- Word Bank
- Describe the Flying Fox
- Identify My Body Parts
- Create your Own
- What Makes Me Unique?
- If You Were…
- News Analysis
- Video Analysis
- File your Bill!
- Questioning
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a flying fox?
A flying fox is a type of fruit bat that is found in many regions of the world, particularly in tropical and subtropical areas. They are known for their large size and the ability to fly long distances.
What do flying foxes eat?
Flying foxes primarily feed on fruits, nectar, and pollen. They also occasionally eat leaves, flowers, and insects.
How do flying foxes fly?
Flying foxes have long, narrow wings that are supported by strong muscles, which allow them to fly long distances. Their wingspan can reach up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) and they fly at a speed of about 15-20 km/h.
How do flying foxes navigate while flying?
Flying foxes navigate by using their eyesight and a heightened sense of smell to locate food and roosting sites. They also use echolocation to navigate in the dark.
Are flying foxes endangered?
Some species of flying foxes are considered to be endangered, due to habitat loss, hunting, and other human-related activities. The population of some species has declined significantly in recent years. Conservation efforts are in place to protect these species and to help their population recover.
Link/cite this page
If you reference any of the content on this page on your own website, please use the code below to cite this page as the original source.
Link will appear as Flying Fox Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, January 23, 2023
Use With Any Curriculum
These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.