Every once in a while Warren Dick gets a call from a concerned resident inquiring about bats on their property, usually wanting to get rid of them.
A few days ago he received a call from an elderly woman on the Bluff, who had a bat on the eve’s right outside her bedroom window. She was unsure about leaving it there as she was scared they spread disease. He went to have a look and give some advice, after which she was quite happy to leave the bat be.
The Wahlberg’s epauletted fruit bat is a common resident of the Durban South area. Warren enjoys watching them fly through his garden at night. There is also a small group that he photographs near the Coedmore Castle within the Kenneth Stainbank Nature Reserve.
They can occur in groups of between three 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 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, and in fact these fruit bats are able to see pretty well.
People believe that bats carry rabies. This is also not true, less than one 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.
Bats do not carry any disease that is easily transmitted to humans by being in close proximity to them. The only way you may pick up a disease from them is if you ate them or their faeces raw. There is a slim chance of a bat having a lyssavirus, but you would need to be bitten to be infected.
There have also been a lot of untruths going around about wildlife during the Covid-19 pandemic, making folks more scared and vary of animals, especially bats. There has been a sharp increase in the senseless cruelty and killing of local wildlife in this time.
Warren calls on people to stop killing wildlife and if you know of anyone poisoning or shooting wildlife, report them to the police or SPCA.
If you would like to contact Warren to have some of your interesting insects, snakes or other wildlife identified, send him a WhatsApp message or call him on 072-211-0353.
