The Battery

The only bats I've seen in zoos are Old World fruit bats and vampire bats, and even vampire bats are really rare. Now, some Old World fruit bats are diurnal which might explain their popularity relative to vampire bats. And I've read that insect-eating bats are difficult to keep in captivity because they insist on catching live prey. On the other hand, insect-eating bats are a large and diverse group, and I wonder how many of those species zoos have made an effort to keep. The Bat World Sanctuary in Texas seems to do fine with a variety of microbats. And what about New World fruit bats and nectar-eating bats? Why does no one seem to keep those?

Two other explanations I've seen regarding bats is that they don't make good display subjects and that they're simply not cost-effective in terms of the revenue they draw. Both of these seem like they could be overcome with proper exhibit design and marketing. To start with, it would seem to make sense to offer most interactions with visitors in a heavily sound-proofed nocturnal exhibit with phones to the exhibit visitors can pick up to hear the bats' calls on lower frequencies.

It would also help to include as large and interesting an array of bat biodiversity as possible. Vampire bats, New World fruit bats, and any bat with unusual dietary habits should be present as possible. As should disc-winged and sucker-footer bats, which not only evolved suckers in parallel but also sleep upright. And mouse-tailed bats, with their primitive echolocation linking them to the Old World fruit bats which are their closest relatives. I'd really, really like my fantasy Battery to have New Zealand lesser short-tailed and bumblebee bat. Since New Zealand zoos have not made an attempt to keep the former it seems a political impossibility, while everything I've heard about Kitti's hog-nosed bat suggests that it's a really delicate species.

Nonetheless, it's a fantasy zoo. So, here are the species I would like in my battery. First an attempt to get one species from each of the bat families other than vesper, free-tailed, leaf nose, and Old World fruit bats, and if the family has multiple genera, representatives of at least some of those.

1. New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata)
   
2. Malagasy sucker-footed bat (Myzopoda aurita)
3. Disc-winged bat (Thyroptera sp.)
4. Ghost-faced bat (Mormoops megalophylla)
5. Wagner's mustached bat (Pteronotus personatus)
   
6. Small mouse-tailed bat (Rhinopoma muscatellum)
7. Bumblebee bat (Craseonycteris thonglongyai)
8. Lesser bulldog bat (Noctilio albiventris)
9. Malagasy slit-faced bat (Nycteris madagascariensis)
10. Pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus, accepting Antrozoidae as a distinct family)
    
11. Thumbless bat (Furipterus horrens)
12. Horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus sp.)
    
13. Mexican funnel-eared bat (Natalus stramineus)
14. Bahamian funnel-eared bat (Chilonatalus tumidifrons)
15. Heart-nosed bat (Cardioderma cor)
16. Yellow-winged bat (Lavia frons)
17. Australian ghost bat (Macroderma gigas)
18. Northern ghost bat (Diclidurus albus)
19. Black-bearded tomb bat (Taphozous melanopogon)
20. Yellow-bellied pouched bat (Saccolaimus flaviventris)
21. Frosted sac-winged bat (Saccopteryx canescens)
22. Short-eared bat (Cyttarops alecto)
23. Proboscis bat (Rhynchonycteris naso)

Now on to the leaf-nosed bats, where I've got a number I'd like to see:

1. Common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus)
2. Hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata)
3. White-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi)
4. Red fruit bat (Stenoderma rufum)
5. Cuban flower bat (Phyllonycteris poeyi)
6. Cuban fruit-eating bat (Brachyphylla nana)
7. Tent-making bat (Uroderma bilobatum)
8. Orange nectar bat (Lonchophylla robusta)
9. Golden bat (Mimon bennettii)
10. Banana bat (Musonycteris harrisoni)
11. Honduran white bat (Ectophylla alba)
    
12. Long-snouted bat (Platalina genovensium)

Free-tailed and vesper bats I'm less confident about, the free-tailed bats in particular because I don't like mastiff bats and those are the most interesting of the free-tailed bats.

1. Disc-footed bat (Eudiscopus denticulus)
   
2. Painted bat (Kerivoula picta)
   
3. Clear-winged woolly bat (Kerivoula pellucida)
4. Desert long-eared bat (Otonycteris hemprichii)
5. Spotted bat (Euderma maculatum)
   
6. Fish-eating bat (Myotis vivesi)
7. Desert yellow bat (Scotoecus pallidus)
8. Bicolor tube-nosed bat (Murina bicolor)
9. Eastern pipistrelle (Perimyotis subflavus)
   
10. Large-eared free-tailed bat (Otomops martiensseni)
11. Broad-eared bat (Nyctinomops laticaudatus)
    
12. Blunt-eared bat (Tomopeas ravus)

The Old World fruit bats I'm even less certain about. I've had so little interest in the so-called megabats until recently that I only just learned that nectar-eating bats pollinate plants in the Old World too.

1. Zenker's fruit bat (Scotonycteris zenkeri)
2. Little collared fruit bat (Myonycteris torquata)
3. Common nectar bat (Eonycteris spelaea)
4. Epauletted fruit bat (Epomophorus sp.)

Any rate, while this is essentially a wish list of bats I'd like to see, I do fantasize about the creation of a giant bat-centered zoo, however unrealistic I know that to be.

 

I agree that bats are fascinating. Their faces are incredible, with strange structures used mostly for echolocation, resembling creatures from fantasy movies.

However, they are small and nocturnal and so zoos did not crack a way to show them to visitors.
Night houses - show small blurry shapes, so just one bat species is enough.
Hands-on demonstrations of tame animals - can be done, but time consuming and stressful for bats.
Models and movies - potentially good but zoo should be about real animals.

If you can find a new way of interesting presenting bats (and other groups like insects or frogs) it would be great.

 

I was thinking a giant night house, however unless you know what a species is and are excited to see it; you're correct that that would be uninteresting for most visitors. Sucker-footed bats and tent-making bats have neat enough sleeping habits that they might be interesting enough for visitors to see in daylight.

Moreover there are at least six distinct feeding habits displayed by bats, which could make the feedings interesting.

1. Most bats hunt insects on the wing.
   
2. Vampire bats land on their victims and feed on blood.
3. Fruit bats land on fruit and gnaw it open.
   
4. Nectar-eating bats hover while sucking up nectar, like butterflies and hummingbirds.
5. Fish-eating bats swoop down on the water to catch fish.
6. New Zealand short-tailed bats forage on the ground for grubs.

There's likely more, but those are behaviors that I know.

Now New Zealand short-tailed bats would be politically impossible for any but a New Zealand zoo to display (and might be politically impossible for a New Zealand zoo as well), and fish-eating bats populations are declining, so the Mexican government may have similar objections to their collection for foreign zoos unless there's evidence the zoo could establish a successful captive-breeding program.

The animal ambassador point is an interesting one. I know that a lot of bat species are stressed by handling and crowds but it would be interesting to try and hand-raise various bat species, and see whether some species can handle being handled if they're hand-raised. I also know that some nocturnal species can be acclimated to daylight activity; whether that's true of any bat species is something I don't think has been tested.

In my ideal world, it would be possible to design a free-flying enclosure with mixed species of bats, much like an aviary, and have it open at night, with supplemental illumination to the level of the full moon.) However rabies concerns almost certainly mean that the USDA would never allow that.

But it occurs to me that I live in Texas, one of the few states that doesn't currently restrict private ownership of bats. And Austin is already known as a bat-friendly city. Hypothetically I could experiment with keeping, displaying, and breeding bat exhibits myself. I say "hypothetically," because that assumes quantities of time and money I don't currently have.

 

Old-World megabats are probably the easiest to train as ambassadors. The World Bird Sanctuary has two straw-colored fruit bats as ambassadors. They were actually parent raised and lived at the Milwaukee County Zoo for the first two years of their lives before being trained to be ambassadors at WBS. Pteropus sp. can easily be used as ambassadors if hand raised. Lubee's spectacled flying fox was hand raised privately, and comes "running" whenever she hears guests on a tour. Similarly, the hand-raised little golden mantled flying fox was hard to keep away from the guests (or for that matter, the door to the enclosure). I understand you want to stay away from the conventional Old World megabats, but they would likely be your biggest draw and your best bet for an ambassador. Additionally, as you mentioned above, they are somewhat diurnal (as most roost in trees) or at least more active during the day than other groups of bats. At Lubee I saw a fair bit of activity from almost all the species I saw.

 

It's not that I want to stay away from megabats. It's just that the old division between "megabats" and "microbats" is essentially meaningless, since "megabats" are one of 16+ families. of bats, and one of six families in their suborder if we split according to genetics rather than morphology. And it's boring that pretty much whenever I see bats in the zoo they're Old World fruit bats.

One exception was vampire bats in the Bronx zoo. Another was Dr. Spooky's Animal Museum (which I talked about elsewhere), which had some microbat species I don't remember. In hindsight I wonder where he got them from. Zoos don't usually keep them (even if an AZA zoo would have sold them to a roadside attraction) and the only bats I've seen in the pet trade are Egyptian fruit bats.

 

Not all microbats are insectivores or sanguivores. There are also carnivores like the ghost bat and even the noctule, and nectar feeders, and frugivores. Fruit and nectar feeding phyllostomids seem easy in zoos. I would imagine more microbats would be prosper were they properly tried.

 

Ah, a lovely topic. Of the >1200 bat species, several have been kept in laboratories, zoos and other institutions worldwide. Of only very few species (among them also nectarivorous bats), more or less stable captive breeding populations have been established. The reasons for this lack of greater diversity represented in captivity are not just creating and successfully accepted adequate feed (The Bat World Sanctuary only keeps non-release single specimens, and has to invest some serious effort into feeding only those), but also behavioural aspects, special physiological adoptions (unless you build a special wind tunnel, you will have a hard time creating an adequate habitat for fast-flying species such as noctules-which, btw. aren’t mainly not carnivorous), scarity of available specimens, national and international red tape, lack of funding etc. have to be mentioned.
As for original displays: the Noctalis at Bad Segeberg cleverly displays close-up night vision videos of their Carollia perspicillata colony on large screens, allowing for a detailed view of their little faces.
Otherwise, as previously mentioned, public medical training and tame specimens have been successfully used to raise public awareness for bats

 

How well do the carnivorous bats do?

 

Depending on the individual species. Megaderma lyra has been kept in European institutions for many years, but never reproduced well enough to establish. Some might be kept in India (who is not exporting them).
Phyllostomus hastutus is kept in a few institutions, but is omnivorous.
The Australian Ghost bat is kept and has been bred in some Australian institutions, but will never be exported.
Vampyrum spectrum, Ia io etc. are currently not kept in captivity.

 

Given the absence of Aussie fauna in Europe someone should recieve ghost bats.

 

Yeah, for sure. Please add some platypuses, quokkas and thorny dragons to that order. And if you’re at it, throw in some drop bears and bunyips...^^

 

It would be very cool to see ghost bats outside of Australia, like here in the States! Unfortunately, I agree with Batto that it's highly unlikely. Australia very rarely sends any native species out that aren't already present in European/North American zoos, and since ghost bats are not yet firmly established in Australia it would not even be considered.

In terms of expanding diversity in bat collections, there are a sizeable number of bulldog (fish-eating) bats being held at a couple of collections here in the US. If research on their husbandry goes well, they could fill the role of a carnivorous species in captivity. And unlike Australia, the range countries would be most likely cooperate.

 

How did South Lakes obtain so many macropods? In the past they had a few species.

 

Given that ghost bats are prone to stress, exporting them long-distance might not be a good idea at all.

I somehow doubt that; said countries actually often have stright annual native bat capture quotas for international bat scientists, and probably even more so for zoos.

 

That is interesting; I was not aware of that. The US receives wild founders from Latin America for other species quite regularly, including jaguars, anteaters, and birds, so I assumed it wouldn't be that much of an issue. With that being the case, I'm curious about how the fishing bats currently in the US were bred and sourced.

 

The concept of presenting unfairly mystified animal groups associated with human-wildlife conflicts to the public is very appealing to me. It would be interesting if this thread delved more into the topic of how the exhibits were designed.

I agree that megabats were overlooked. While they might be "overrated" (compared to other bats) and not as taxonomically unique as the Mega/Microchiroptera division presents them to be, their numbers come close to the leaf-nosed bat's, yet there was no hesitation to list 5-10% of the latter species list. Not of metion conservation value and which of those two are more likely to get completely ignored by the guests...

About carnivore bats, RioZoo (now BioParque do Rio) kept and bred, among other bats, two close relatives of Vampyrum spectrum: Tonatia bidens and Chrotopterus auritus. I'm not sure if they're working with bats currently.