| Little Red Flying Fox | |
|---|---|
| Little Red Flying-foxes at Wellington Zoo | |
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Chiroptera |
| Family: | Pteropodidae |
| Genus: | Pteropus |
| Species: | P. scapulatus |
| Binomial name | |
| Pteropus scapulatus Peters, 1862 |
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| Little Red Flying Fox range (blue — native, brown — vagrant) |
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The Little Red Flying Fox (Pteropus scapulatus) is a species of megabat native to northern and eastern Australia.[2] With a weight of 300–600 grams (11–21 oz) it is large fruit bat, but the smallest flying fox in mainland Australia (the others being the Black, Spectacled and Grey-headed flying foxes). It has the widest range of all the species, going much further inland than the larger fruit bats. Its diet primarily consists of nectar and pollen of eucalypt blossoms, the pollination of which it is largely responsible. The Little Red Flying Fox is nomadic, and can be found in large groups of up to a million individuals. This species births 6 months later than the other mainland flying-fox species, giving birth in April - May [3].
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This species of flying fox hangs in a different way to other mainland species. The larger species tend to hang an arm length apart; however, the Little Reds tend to clump together so that the bats may hang in groups of 20 or more animals on an individual branch. This is shown on a small scale in the image on this page. For this reason the animals are associated with significant canopy and branch damage in camps where they reside. They also tend to appear in very large numbers (20,000 or more) and the 'foot print' of a camp can expand rapidly for the several weeks or months they remain at a site. Their large numbers and the damage they cause to a camp site mean they are not very popular animals.
Negative public perception of the species has intensified with the discovery of three recently emerged zoonotic viruses that are potentially fatal to humans: Hendra virus, Australian bat lyssavirus and Menangle virus.[4]
The animals are nomadic and difficult to track as they tend not to live in urban areas. There is no accurate method in use currently of estimating the species to determine if the species is holding its own or in decline. The species is very likely to be affected by the same factors that have seen the Grey-headed flying-fox and Spectacled flying-fox listed as threatened, that is the destruction of foraging areas and roosting habitat [5].