| Ohhhhh...... So squishy and furry. Just like the Lovely R. The Auckland Zoo is breeding these endangered endemic bats so yay for them. Read more about it here. I love bats and have been lucky enough to see great clouds of flying foxes (not strictly bats, I know, and they do eat your fucking mangoes) and handle Australian chiroptera while I lived in Arnhem Land. I'm not sure which species, but it was one of these guys; I think it might have been the Common Sheathtail Bat or another species of Emballonuridae. |
As a dreadful child I, along with other juvenile naturalists, used to invade the slightly scary granite boulder caves on a isthmus at the edge of the Arafura Sea and gently pluck the little bats from where they were blamelessly nestling on the ceilings. They were almost unbelievably tiny under all their silky grey fur and pretty uncomplaining, happy enough to be warm and contained as long as we didn't do anything sudden or mean. As it became dark we would stand on the beach and open our hands; the little bats would crawl to the end of our fingers and then flit away into the blood-warm and ember-red evening.
I know they're vectors for some pretty gross diseases, but so are people. I regret nothing.
> East Woody Island, Arnhem Land, Australia.
(pic beachsafe.org.au)
I know they're vectors for some pretty gross diseases, but so are people. I regret nothing.
> East Woody Island, Arnhem Land, Australia.
(pic beachsafe.org.au)
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