Black-eared Flying-fox

Fascinating facts about the Black-eared Flying-fox

• A black-eared flying-fox can drink half its body weight in nectar in a single night — equivalent to a human downing 40 litres of juice without stopping. Their tongue is as long as their forearm and covered in bristles that act like a nectar mop, allowing them to lap flowers dry in seconds. This feeding marathon fuels their nightly flights across 40 kilometres of rainforest, making them one of Southeast Asia's most important pollinators for wild bananas, durians, and mangoes.
• Despite their 1.5-metre wingspan, black-eared flying-foxes weigh less than a smartphone — around 600 grams. They achieve this by having bones so hollow and paper-thin that you could read a newspaper through them. Yet they generate enough power to climb vertically from a standstill and hover like a hummingbird, a feat no other mammal larger than a mouse can perform.
• A black-eared flying-fox navigates rainforest canopies in complete darkness using sound frequencies humans cannot hear — calls between 10 and 200 kilohertz that bounce off leaves smaller than a fingernail. Their brain devoted to processing these echoes is proportionally larger than a human's entire cortex. This biological sonar is so precise they can dodge individual twigs travelling at 50 kilometres per hour.
• Female black-eared flying-foxes give birth to a single pup after a pregnancy of just 140 days, then carry it on their body for the first 3 weeks of life while hunting — adding an extra kilogram to their already lean frame. Mothers recognise their pups among thousands by individual calls alone. A pup doubles its weight in the first month and is weaned by four months, racing against a 20-year lifespan compressed into constant survival in a shrinking forest.
• In 1998, researchers discovered that pollen stuck to a black-eared flying-fox's fur as it fed could travel up to 25 kilometres between isolated rainforest patches, pollinating plants too far apart for insects to connect. By mapping pollen on captured bats, scientists realised these animals were living bridges holding the genetic diversity of Southeast Asian rainforests together — yet their populations have crashed 50% in two decades as fruit plantations replace native trees.

At a glance

About the Black-eared Flying-fox

As the sun sets over the lush canopy, a dark silhouette emerges, its leathery wings unfolding like a cloak as the black-eared flying-fox takes to the evening skies. With a fluid, almost ethereal motion, it glides effortlessly on the thermal currents, its large eyes scanning the landscape below for the ripest fruits and nectar-rich blooms. In this fleeting, crepuscular world, the black-eared flying-fox reigns supreme, a master of the twilight realm, its very existence a testament to the enduring beauty and mystery of the natural world.

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