Zoobat Collections (N. America)

On-display.

 

Updated List:

Megachiroptera

Rodrigues flying fox (Pteropus rodricensis) - 15 holders
Akron Zoo
Bronx Zoo
Brookfield Zoo
Central Park Zoo
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Lincoln Children's Zoo
Louisville Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
Moody Gardens
Oregon Zoo
Philadelphia Zoo
Pueblo Zoo
Riverbanks Zoo
San Diego Safari Park

Large/Malayan flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus) - 7 holders
Busch Gardens Tampa
Columbus Zoo
Disney's Animal Kingdom
Lowry Park Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
National Aviary in Pittsburgh
Oakland Zoo

Indian flying fox (Pteropus giganteus) - 13 holders
Baton Rouge Zoo
Boise Zoo
Bronx Zoo
Cincinnati Zoo
Houston Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
Metro Richmond Zoo
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo
Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
Sedgwick County Zoo
Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
Topeka Zoo
Woodland Park Zoo

Island flying fox (Pteropus hypomelanus) - 4 holders
Brevard Zoo
El Paso Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
Oakland Zoo

Little golden-mantled flying fox (Pteropus pumilus) - 3 holders
Columbus Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo

Grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) - 2 holders (1 bts)
Lubee Bat Conservancy
National Aquarium in Baltimore (bts)

Spectacled Flying Fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) - 1 holder
Lubee Bat Conservancy

Straw-colored fruit bat (Eidolon helvum) - 29 holders (1 bts)
Akron Zoo
Brevard Zoo
Bronx Zoo
Busch Gardens Tampa
Calgary Zoo
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
Detroit Zoo
Elmwood Park Zoo
Franklin Park Zoo
Hogle Zoo
Houston Zoo
Jacksonville Zoo
Kansas City Zoo
Lake Superior Zoo
Lincoln Park Zoo
Lowry Park Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
Metro Richmond Zoo
Milwaukee County Zoo
Minnesota Zoo,
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
Oregon Zoo
Palo Alto Junior Musem & Zoo
Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
Prospect Park Zoo
Racine Zoo
Sacramento Zoo (bts)
Saint Paul's Como Zoo
Toronto Zoo
Tulsa Zoo

Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) - 20 holders (1 possibly bts)
Bird Kingdom
Blank Park Zoo
Brookfield Zoo
Capital of Texas Zoo
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
GarLyn Zoo
Gladys Porter Zoo (bts?)
Lincoln Park Zoo
Lubee Bat Conservancy
Lupa Zoo
Memphis Zoo
Minnesota Zoo
Moody Gardens
Museum of Discovery and Science (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo
Oregon Zoo
Palo Alto Junior Musem & Zoo
Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Timbavati Wildlife Park
Toronto Zoo

Ruwenzori long-haired fruit bat (Rousettus lanosus) - 8 holders
Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary
Bear Creek Sanctuary
Boise Zoo
Franklin Park Zoo
Lincoln Children's Zoo
Milwaukee County Zoo
Minnesota Zoo
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo

Microchiroptera (frugivorous/nectarivorous)

Common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) - 14 holders
Audubon Zoo
Buffalo Zoo
Cincinnati Zoo
Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo
Dallas World Aquarium
Denver Zoo
Jacksonville Zoo
Louisville Zoo
Milwaukee County Zoo
North American Wildlife Park (Hershey, PA)
North Carolina Zoo
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo
Philadelphia Zoo
Texas State Aquarium

Greater bulldog bat (Noctilio leporinus) - 2 holders
Memphis Zoo
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo

Greater spear-nosed bat (Phyllostomus hastatus) - 3 holders
Assiboine Park Zoo
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
Peoria Zoo

Pale spear-nosed bat (Phyllostomus discolor) - 1 holder
Miami Zoo

Pallas's long-tongued bat (Glossophaga soricina) - 3 holders
Houston Zoo
Mesker Park Zoo
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo

Lesser long-tongued bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) - 1 holder
Fort Worth Zoo

Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) - 13 holders (2 bts)
Cameron Park Zoo
Denver Zoo
Detroit Zoo (bts)
Edmonton Valley Zoo
Houston Zoo
Miami Zoo
Miller Park Zoo
Pittsburgh Zoo
Potawatomi Zoo
Roger Williams Park Zoo (bts)
Tulsa Zoo
Vancouver Aquarium
Wildlife World Zoo

Seba's short-tailed fruit bat (Carollia perspicillata) - 30 holders (1 bts)
Akron Zoo
Assiniboine Park Zoo
Audubon Zoo
Busch Gardens Tampa
Catoctin Zoo
Central Park Zoo
Dallas World Aquarium
Denver Zoo
Detroit Zoo (bts)
Elmwood Park Zoo
Gladys Porter Zoo
Henry Vilas Zoo
Houston Zoo
Jacksonville Zoo
Lake Superior Zoo
Lincoln Children's Zoo
Maryland Zoo in Baltimore
Memphis Zoo
Miami Zoo
Miller Park Zoo
Moody Gardens
Nashville Zoo
Oklahoma City Zoo
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo
Pittsburgh Zoo
Potter Park Zoo
San Antonio Zoo
Staten Island Zoo
Stone Zoo
Tulsa Zoo

Microchiroptera (insectivorous) (on-display only, no bts)

Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) - 1 holder
San Antonio Zoo

Pallid Bat (Antrozous pallidus) - 1 holder
Fort Worth Zoo

Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus) - 5 holders (1 possibly bts)
Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary (Green Bay, WI)
Center for Wildlife (Cape Neddick, Maine)
Earthplace (Westport, Connecticut)
Hutchinson Zoo
Rolling Hills Zoo (bts?)

Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus) - 1 holder
Ansonia Nature Center (Ansonia, Connecticut)

 

AFAIK Bay Beach no longer has Big Brown Bat.

 

A number of collections in Ohio and Michigan hold hig brown bat (Ohio Wildlife Center, Lake Erie Nature and Science Center, and others I have forgotten near Detroit and Cleveland) Brukner Nature Center near Dayton Ohio has Little brown bat. All this is based of websites (Brukner hasn't changed theirs in years, so don't know)

 

Do you know if any of these places have them on-display, or are they behind the scenes?

 

Bronx's Straw-Colored are bts.

~Thylo

 

I think all on display. Brukner also has Big brown.

 

Apparently the White-winged Vampire Bat at Rosamond Gifford Zoo is still alive at the ripe old age of 24 - and here I was just assuming that it had died years ago I will add it to the next iteration.

 

Its been a while but was that the bat in the small tree trunk like structure? I am trying to figure out if I ever saw it for my life lost

 

That's the enclosure that's been described to me, yes. It may still be there, that part I'm unsure about.

 

Marianas Fruit Bat - not sure if this counts as "North America" but Guam and Rota are part of the United States. Guam Zoo has them as well as I believe the Rota Zoo. (My friend's uncle owned that zoo and he told me they have bats, most likely Marianas fruit)

 

Well then I definitely saw the last one Lost all my photos from that visit so I am kind of just living off memories.

 

Yeah he's kept in a small terrarium in that fake tree trunk, but I'm told after closing he's moved to a larger space for the night.

~Thylo

 

We're sure Rota still exists. Nothing I can find about it from later than 2008.

 

I'll ask

 

Wildlife Conservation and Education Center in Garfield NJ has Straw-colored fruit bat, Egyptian fruit bat, and Indian flying-fox

 

Incredible ! It is obviously an animal that is very well cared for.

 

I'm curious, do you know any more details about this particular individual ? Is it male or female ? When did it arrive ? Where did it originally come from / was it wild caught ?

 

All very interesting queries, so I did some digging for you.

According to this paper from Journal of Mammalogy 1999 (https://watermark.silverchair.com/8...D4wbTPPif-UPx-UVJkXtRCGAhM-PIkuDo1RMSVRVTBM2A), several Diaemus youngi (white-winged vamp) were wild-caught in Trinidad and maintained at a disease research center there before being shipped to Cornell University in 1993; the D. youngi were kept there until 1996 when they transferred to Rosamond Gifford. I don't know if the living bat is from that group or a later group. Apparently Cornell churned out a lot of vampire bat research in the 90's and 2000's; some of it was done with other captive colonies of D. youngi (see second paragraph) and some of it was done with the Rosamond Gifford animals, so I'm unsure if any remained at Cornell past '96 (seems that they were keeping common vampire, Desmodus rotundus, until around 2005 at least).

Other references I saw to captive colonies include a group imported by University of Maryland (also from Trinidad) around 2010, another group at the New Mexico Bat Research
Institute (Cornell has used this group for research), and at least one instance from the 90's in Brazil (two scientists from that country have contributed much of the research done on D. youngi). I also read that the first captive breeding didn't take place until the beginning of the 2010's. If that's the case, then the animal at Rosamond Gifford would have to be wild-caught - and if it's from the initial 1993 import, then it would actually be older than 24.

It's been stated on this site that it's the last of a group of five that came to the zoo. As for the sex of the remaining individual, I've read conflicting things; on this site it's always been identified as female, but a zoo source from 2015 talked about the bat using masculine pronouns. Its name is Tlahema.

If anyone wants to reach out and contact the zoo they might be able to confirm some of these details.

 

That's really interesting! Thank you so much for doing that background research ! Much appreciated!

It really does makes sense that a disease research centre or university would source bats from Trinidad as there is quite a lengthy history of vampire bat related research on that island.

I believe that it was in Trinidad that both the connection between the common species being a transmitter of rabies was established and the standard method of "control" (now in use throughout Latin America when dealing with "problem" colonies) was developed.

It is also really nice to hear that not only one of these bats is still in captivity in a zoo (I've always thought they should be kept more often despite all the difficulties due to how interesting they are) but that it has survived to a ripe old age due to being well cared for too.