Mammals
Large Flying Fox
Pteropus vampyrus · also called large flying fox, greater flying fox, kalang
The large flying fox is a bat the size of a small dog, with a fox-like face, big dark eyes, and leathery wings that can span a metre and a half. It hunts nothing, echolocates nothing, and sees perfectly well — it is a fruit-and-flower specialist that keeps Southeast Asia’s forests pollinated and seeded while everyone sleeps.
Overview
Large flying foxes live in lowland forests, mangroves, and farmland across Southeast Asia. By day they hang in camps — tree roosts of hundreds to tens of thousands of bats, loud and constantly bickering. At dusk the whole camp streams out, sometimes flying tens of kilometres to reach fruiting and flowering trees, feeds through the night, and returns before dawn.
A bat that is nothing like the stereotype
The large flying fox breaks nearly every popular idea about bats:
- It eats only fruit juice, nectar, pollen, and flowers — no insects, no blood.
- It has large eyes and excellent night vision, plus a strong sense of smell.
- It uses no echolocation — that belongs to the separate group of insect-eating microbats.
When it feeds, it often squeezes the juice from fruit and spits out the fibre.
The forest’s night shift
Flying foxes are major pollinators and seed dispersers. They pollinate trees including the durian, and because they travel so far and drop seeds far from the parent tree, they are essential to forest regeneration and connectivity — replacing forest that birds and smaller animals cannot.
Disease
Pteropus bats are the natural reservoir of Nipah virus. Human outbreaks have been linked to drinking raw date-palm sap that bats fed on, or to infected pigs, not to casual contact. As with any wild mammal, flying foxes should not be handled.
Status
The large flying fox is Near Threatened and declining. It is hunted heavily for food across much of its range and openly sold in markets, and its roost trees and lowland forest are being cleared. With one pup a year, colonies recover slowly, and several have collapsed.
Large Flying Fox: common questions
How big is a large flying fox?
Its body is about the size of a small cat's, roughly 27 to 32 centimetres, and its wingspan reaches 1.2 to 1.5 metres — as wide as a person is tall. That makes it one of the largest bats in the world by wingspan, alongside the golden-capped fruit bat and the Indian flying fox. It is not especially heavy, though, usually under a kilogram, because a flying animal has to keep its weight down; the giant golden-capped fruit bat is heavier. Flying foxes look even bigger in the air because of the broad, dark, membranous wings.
Are flying foxes blind, and do they use echolocation?
Neither. The phrase "blind as a bat" does not apply to fruit bats at all. Flying foxes have large, well-developed eyes and rely on excellent night vision and a sharp sense of smell to find ripe fruit and flowering trees and to navigate. They do not echolocate — that ability is found in the other main bat group, the insect-eating microbats. A flying fox flying at dusk is using its eyes much as a bird would.
Are flying foxes dangerous to people?
They are not aggressive and do not attack people, and they eat only plants, so they are no threat as predators. The real concern is disease. Pteropus bats are the natural reservoir of Nipah virus, and human outbreaks in Bangladesh and Malaysia have been traced to people drinking raw date-palm sap that bats had fed on, or handling sick pigs that had eaten bat-contaminated fruit. The risk comes from those specific exposure routes, not from bats flying overhead or roosting in a distant tree. As with any wild mammal, a bat should never be handled, and one found on the ground should be reported, not picked up.
Why are large flying foxes declining?
Two main pressures. They are hunted heavily for food across much of Southeast Asia — flying fox meat is sold openly in markets in parts of Indonesia and the Philippines, and large colonies are easy targets at their roosts. And their roost trees and lowland forests are being cleared for agriculture and development, while the fruiting trees they depend on are lost. Because a female raises only one pup a year, colonies recover slowly, and several have collapsed. The species is listed as Near Threatened and is on CITES Appendix II.