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The Indian Flying Fox – World’s Largest Bat
Indian Flying Fox – The Indian Flying-Fox may be the world’s largest bat, popularly known as Greater Indian Fruit Bat or Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox. Greater Indian Fruit bat lives in tropical forests and swamps in India.
Anatomy
The flying-fox is so called due to its unique, fox like appearance. Usually The Indian flying-fox is in reddish-brown coat, characteristically long snout as well as large eyes. And the greater Indian fruit bat resembles a little fox with wings.
The greater Indian fruit bat have leathery wing and the habit of sleeping in an upside down position. The animal exhibits small ears. Instead of using echolocation, this flying fox perceives its environment through well-developed senses of vision and smell and it helping the animal to detect food.
Like all other bats, the Indian flying-fox has claws, found on the second finger of each wing and used for grasping fruits and other objects.
SEE VIDEO OF WORLD’S LARGEST BAT – GREATER INDIAN FRUIT BAT
The Indian Flying Fox – Food and Habitat
The Indian flying foxes are usually frugivorous or nectarivorous. They eat fruits or lick nectar from flowers. The Indian flying foxes are lick nectar from banana flowers.
At dusk, these bats forage for ripe fruit. While ingesting fruit, these bats expel waste that pollinates and disperse seeds.
Habitat
The Indian flying foxes are highly social creatures, forming large roosts of several hundred animals and usually occupies one tree. These bats live in a ‘vertical’, male-dominated hierarchy system, where higher-ranked individuals occupy higher spots of the tree, while lower-ranked individuals remain on lower spots.
The Indian-flying-foxes spend their nighttime hours looking for food, feeding, digesting their meal, resting as well as socializing and moving around the tree. In order to maintain suitable body temperature, these bats fan themselves with their wings.
SEE VIDEO OF INDIAN FLYING-FOX
Photos: Anoop Santhakumar
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