Facts: Do you know why Flying Fox are one of the best pet on earth?!

MEGABATS

Overview And Description

Megabat or Flying Fox is the common name for any of the largely herbivorous Old World bats comprising the suborderMegachiroptera of the order Chiroptera (bats), characterized by true wings and flight (as with all bats), large and prominent eyes, claws generally on the second digits supporting the wings, and an excellent sense of smell. Echolocation is almost unknown among the megabats, while it is prominent in the other major division of bats, the microbats, comprising the suborder Microchiroptera.

Overview And Description

MEGA BATS = MEGA PET

Extant megabats are placed in one family, Pteropodidae, which has about 170 species. These species are found in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Megabats primarily feed on fruit, nectar, or pollen. These flyingmammals are also referred to as fruit bats, old world fruit bats, or flying foxes, or more specifically as Megachiropteran fruit bats.

Many of the megabat nectarivores are important for pollination of flowering plants, transfer pollen as they feed on the nectar of plants. Other megabats are important for plants as agents of seed dispersal. For humans, the large size, large eyes, and somewhat "spectral appearance" of the megabats has led to their sometimes being portrayed in horror movies to represent vampires or to otherwise lend an aura of spookiness. In reality, the bats of this group are almost exclusively herbivorous creatures and pose no direct threat to human beings, baby cows, or ill children.

Typically, bats, which comprise the mammalian order Chiroptera, are divided into two distinct groups that generally are given the rank of suborders: Megachiroptera, or megabats, and Microchiroptera, or microbats. These two groups may not represent monophyletic lineages, but taxonomies generally reflect this division (Wund and Myers 2005). The names imply that megabats are larger than microbats, but this is true only in a general sense, as some megabat species are smaller than some microbat species. There are, however, several consistent differences between these two groups.

Fox Island, Australia, is believed to be the largest colony of flying foxes on the continent.

Among the differences between megabats and microbats is the fact that the latter use echolocation, whereas megabats generally do not (except for Rousettus and relatives, which use a simple, unrelated form of echolocation); microbats lack the claw at the second toe of the forelimb characteristic of all but one of the megabats; and megachiropterans tend to have large prominent eyes, unlike the
generally small eyes of the echolocating microbats. Furthermore, the ears of the microbats tend to have large pinnae (external ears) and the ears do not form a closed ring, but the edges are separated from each other at the base of the ear. Megabats also tend to have a diet of fruit, nectar, or pollen, only supplementing their diets with a few insects, while most microbats eat insects.

Megabats range in size from species with adults only about 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) long and 13 grams to species that reach 40 centimeters (16 inches) in length, attain a wingspan of 150 centimeters (5 feet), and weigh nearly 1 kilogram (more than 2 pounds). The large eyes of most fruit bats allow them to orient visually in the twilight of dusk and inside caves and forests. The sense of smell is excellent in megabats
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