Informative facts on Wahlberg’s Epauletted Fruit Bat

By Warren Dick

The Wahlberg’s Epauletted Fruit Bat is a common resident of the Durban South area. I enjoy watching them fly through my garden at night, especially when the mango tree has some ripened fruit on. There is also a small group that I photograph near the Coedmore Castle within the Kenneth Stainbank Nature Reserve.

They can occur in groups of between 3 to 100 individuals, they roost in the daytime in a variety of habitats from open trees to under eves, and their roosting pattern may follow the ripening of fruit trees. Their favourite food plants are the fig trees, such as the Strangler Fig, as well as the Strelitzia Nicolai plants. They are known to fly up to four kilometres in search of food in one night.

These are the largest of the bat species to live in our area, with a wingspan of up to 60cm and a weight of around 100 grams.

Many people fear bats because of old wives tails that have been passed on from one generation to another but the fact is that most of this is simply not true. For example have you heard of the saying, “You are as blind as a bat?” Well that is simply not true, all bats have eye sight to a certain extent, in fact these fruit bats are able to see pretty well.

People believe that bats carry rabies, this is also not true, less than 1 per cent of all the bats in the world carry the disease. People also think that bats attack people and get tangled in your hair, this is also untrue as bats are terrified of humans and will avoid us at all cost.