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I mean, sort of? Megabats and microbats are just two sub-groupings of bats used in biological classification. Megabats can be found in most of southern Asia (from Pakistan eastward, and as far north as roughly the Himalayas), most of sub-Saharan Africa, and northern and eastern Australia. It’s less that Australian bats are unusually large, and more that Europe and the Americas only have small bats.
Bats are cute as hell. Its a pity about the whole lyssa and hendra thing cause I’d love to give one a cuddle.
When I was a young whipper snapper the school had a ranger out who had a bat that you could have crawl all over you. Stinky suckers, but so cute. I probably still have the photo in a box somewhere. Definitely dont think they’d be doing that these days heh.
I mean if you include the wings yes but I don’t think I’ve seen a bat bigger then a chihuahua or some of those other freakish mini designer dogs.
Can I get a source to learn more about this? I think bats are super cute and a bigger one would be even better.
Flying foxes or fruit bats are very conspicuous and you can find them in many cities, such as Sydney. Wikipedia surely has a page for them, and if you look in Google Maps some popular roosting sites are marked too. Like the other person said, their wingspan is about 1 metre, but the body wouldn’t be larger than a tiny chihuahua’s
The video linked below might have info you’re looking for. I don’t remember watching it so cannot be sure.
Why Are Flying Foxes So Important?
Also see Pteropus - Wikipedia.
Just in case you haven’t come across it yet, there’s a community for all things bat here: !bats@lemmy.world
This is the biggest bat in Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-headed_flying_fox
Yeah, looks like a normal weight even for a chihuahua is above 1.5 kg (https://dogslim.com/articles/dog-weight-chart.html), with grey-headed flying foxes (the largest Australian bat) weighing typically less than 1 kg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-headed_flying_fox). It’s maybe possible their ‘leg-span’ - excluding wings - could be similar, though? No idea.
We get the the grey headed flying fox, iirc wings are like 1m wide, body is chonky, we def get some large bats
Also they all carry Australian rabies.
Do you mean Australian bat lyssavirus?
There is no rabies in Australia. However, Australian bats carry other viruses in the lyssavirus family including Australian bat lyssavirus, which is closely related to rabies.
That’s what I said.
So it isn’t rabies but it is identical to rabies.
Does that mean it is just a type of rabies that doesn’t have a treatment?
Maybe the folks at !bats@lemmy.world know the answer.
Australia also has megamoths such as the Bogong.
Finally a moth big enough to snuggle, just have to be extra careful.
I would have classed bogongs as small or medium size, are they really that much larger than other countries moths? If so I’d hate to see their reactions to moths which are actually large, not sure of the species but I’ve seen a few about palm sized.
