Flying foxes, bats affected by rainforest changes
You wanted to know
"Are there really flying foxes?" asked a young Vernon Area Library patron after attending the Lincolnshire library's Unique Animals program.
Flying foxes are oversized bats with large appetites for fruit.
These furry mammals call tropical islands their homes, living in rain forests where fruit is abundant year-round, mostly in the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Rodrigues, Samoa and in Australia.
Brookfield Zoo's Australia House has a colony of 18 Rodrigues fruit bats, or flying foxes; six Egyptian bats; some kangaroos; and wombats.
"They're great animals; they are quite personable," said Tim Sullivan, zoo curator of behavioral husbandry.
The Rodrigues fruit bats have a wing span of up to two-and-a-half feet and can live to be 20 years old.
"Here, they have a constant supply of food, no exposure to weather or climate, and no intervention of people who would reduce their environment," Sullivan said.
Although the zoo makes an all-out effort to replicate the rain forest lifestyle with trees and fake vines decorating the Australia House, bats and other residents take classes in zoo living. Training and enrichment strategies help the bats and other animals to become desensitized so they can adapt to being around visitors at the zoo exhibits.
In their natural habitats, they don't live so comfortably. People hunt bats and they clear away the forest habitats to grab more livable land and to sell the harvested wood. Logging depletes the rain forests and eliminates the buffer rain forests create to minimize devastation from tropical storms.
"They can't survive in fragments of forests," Sullivan said.
Bats have a mutually dependent relationship with the rain forest - they can't live without the fruit and the rain forests can't propagate without the bats that are efficient pollinators and seed spreaders.
"They poop out seeds and help to replant the forest," Sullivan explained. "The forests need bats and bats need the forests."
Throughout the world, bats are critically endangered, and in some cases extinct. Kids can take action. Sullivan said supporting zoos helps zoo officials to work with foreign governments to protect forests and to develop species survival plans - breeding programs that keep species alive.
Eliminating markets for the rain forest woods can help the bats, too.
"Use products with the FSC logo - Forest Stewardship Council. When you read the labels before you buy wood products," Sullivan said, "you can help animals that live 10,000 miles away."
Other organizations, such as the Flying Fox Conservation Fund, help to remove bats from international markets and reintroduce them to native habitats. Educational programs help local citizens learn how to protect these key links in the ecosystem.
Think you're afraid of bats?
"You can see bats in a different way at the zoo. See it nursing its young. You can see that they're more like us than not like us," Sullivan said. "All bats are beneficial to our living on the planet."
Brookfield Zoo offers conservation programs for young people and families. Find out more on the zoo website, brookfieldzoo.org. Information on the Flying Fox Conservation Fund, based in Chicago, can be found at flyingfoxconservationfund.com.
Check it out
The Vernon Area Public Library District in Lincolnshire suggests these titles on flying foxes:
• "It's a Baby Flying Fox" by Katherine Hengel
• "Flying Fox Bats" by Tamara Britton
• "Flying Foxes and Other Bats" by Sheri Reda