Details
Rousettus aegyptiacus
The Egyptian fruit bat is a medium-sized fruit-eating flying fox relative. It roosts in colonies in caves or buildings and flies out at night to feed in trees.
Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)
It ranges across Afrotropical, Palearctic, and Indomalayan forests, savannas, and urban edges. Dark roosts such as caves, rock shelters, and ruins are linked to fruiting areas.
Length 14-16 cm; weight 80-170 g. It has a doglike face, large eyes, brown fur, and broad wings. The tail is short and projects only slightly from the membrane.
Nocturnal and colonial, it can fill large roosts with calls. Unusually for a fruit bat, it uses tongue clicks for simple echolocation.
A herbivore, it eats fruit, nectar, and flowers. It squeezes juice from fruit and helps disperse seeds across the landscape.
Females give birth to a single pup in the roost and nurse it while carrying it on the chest. Young practice wing beats in the roost before night flights.
It is listed as Least Concern. It may be treated as a crop pest, but it also contributes to seed dispersal and pollination.
