Manado Fruit Bat

About this species

Size

One Sulawesi study: head and body 128.25mm; forearm 100mm

Habitat

Caves

Range

Sulawesi, Indonesia

The greater Sulawesi rousette, or Manado fruit bat, is a large, dark-brown fruit bat endemic to Sulawesi. Measurements reported from one Sulawesi collection gave a head-and-body length of 128.25 mm and forearm of 100 mm, making it larger than the rousettes compared in that study. Jentink described it in 1879 from a specimen collected near Gorontalo, then called Celebes, and Boneia remains a genus containing this single recognised species (Sulawesi fruit-bat identification study; Mammal Diversity Database).

Although long classified with rousettes as Rousettus bidens, phylogenetic work supports Boneia as distinct: modern classification places it in Harpyionycterinae, while Rousettus belongs to Rousettinae. Field notes on Sulawesi fruit bats report that it roosts socially in caves, resembling rousettes in that behaviour despite the genetic separation. The opened sources establish Sulawesi and particularly North Sulawesi as its range, but provide no sufficiently documented diet, reproductive schedule or precise colony size (Bergmans and Rozendaal 1988; Almeida, Giannini and Simmons 2016; Mammal Diversity Database).

Description: Wildlife of sulawesi guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com)