Y is for Yap Flying Fox
Image by patrik@patrik.com on the ARKive website, to visit site click here.
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Yap flying foxes are red-furred bats with pointed faces and large, bright, intelligent eyes.
They live on 4 small adjoining islands of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. They inhabit mangroves, forests and agroforests. Agroforests are managed forests planted with trees, shrubs and crops, so that some wildlife can still survive in it.
Flying foxes squeeze the juice from ripe fruits in the roof of their mouths and spit out the pulp. After a night foraging for fruit, they have to clean their fur of the stickiness!
These bats used to be eaten as a delicacy and their numbers were at one time as low as 1,000, but they are doing a little better now hunting has stopped.
However, they are still listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as they live all in one place, and any natural disaster such as a typhoon, or a large loss of habitat could affect them very badly.
© Information excepting image from IUCN . Poem © Liz Brownlee
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- Posted in: A-Z Challenge 2013
- Tagged: animal, bat, nature, poetry, science, Yap flying fox
lizbrownlee - poet 
I haven’t heard of these! How interesting! I also really enjoyed your poem. The image of the bat taking flight was really clear, and that last stanza made me think of children (bright-eyed, sticky, etc.).
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Thank you Stephanie – a lot of these poems will take further work, but having to write one a day has certainly been good for me! They are lovely-looking bats.
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Bats are so cute. I don’t think I’ve seen one of these critters featured yet in the Bat World Sanctuary page, which I’m a fan of on Facebook.
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Oooh, thanks, I’ll have to go and have a look at that!
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Lovely poem as always – but I have never heard of Micronesia. One more thing to look up when this is all over!
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