Lyle's Flying Fox

About this species

Diet

Fruit, flowers, nectar and pollen

Habitat

Tropical and sub-tropical forest, mangrove forest, plantations and secondary forest

Range

Southern Thailand, central and southern Cambodia and extreme south-western Vietnam; a small outlying population in Yunnan, China

Lyle's flying fox is a moderate-sized flying fox with a long snout, large eyes, pointed ears and a fox-like face. The upper parts are mostly blackish apart from a broad collar of orange fur, the wings are black or dark brown and the underparts dark brownish-black. It is found in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, with an outlying population in Yunnan, China, and it faces persecution from farmers and is killed for bushmeat in parts of its range (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is gregarious. A colony of thousands of bats, this species mixed with the large flying fox, roosts in trees in the grounds of the Bat Pagoda in Soc Trang city in the Mekong Delta, where the monks protect them. It feeds on fruit including mango, cashew, sapodilla, dragonfruit, tamarind and rose apple, spitting out most seeds but swallowing some, which are then dispersed, and it also takes flowers, nectar and pollen. It forages in orchards and may fly 50 km between roosts. It is a reservoir of the Nipah virus, which is harmless to bats but can cause fatal disease in pigs and humans.

Description: Wildlife of Vietnam guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)