Barrier-free bat exhibits: Logistics?

filovirus

filovirus

Well-Known Member
This post is inspired by a recent visit to the Omaha Zoo, which has a sizable fruit bat colony in their Lied Jungle. The catch: There's no barrier between the bats and the guests. At all. They can swoop right overhead; could theoretically touch you.

I have two questions.

1 - Are there any other zoos with a similar approach to bats? i.e. not any barrier between the colony and the visitor

2 - How do zoos handle the rabies logistics of a thing like this? If a guest has contact with the bat, is that single bat tested? Does a guest just have to get PEP? What's the response?
 
Look at the bat exhibit at Disney's Animal Kingdom for a model barrier-free exhibit. Other examples are Oakland Zoo, the Central Park Zoo tropical house (free-flight bats), and the Franklin Park Zoo tropical house (free-flight bats).
 
When I was a wee moss boy, during my visit to Singapore Zoo's Fragile Forest, a large fruit bat had perched right in front of me. I was standing in awe upon seeing the animal up close, before it immediately relieved itself, nearly missing my feet.

Visiting the Night Safari a decade later, I remember they also had a small walk-through aviary with lots of branches for the bats to perch and feed on fruit.
 
Of the zoos I've been to that keep bats, the majority of them have their bats free-flying in a walkthrough exhibit, usually in a tropical hall or similar building. The one exception among the zoos I've visited is Dudley Zoo, which do keep their bats in a "regular" enclosure.
While it is theoretically possible for a bat to touch a guest, from what I can gather it doesn't happen too often. At Chester Zoo for example, their bats live in a heavily darkened walkthrough exhibit, but their echolocation enables them to perfectly dodge guests, and actually making contact with one is extremely rare.
As for concerns about rabies, I would imagine any Zoo that keeps free-flying bats would have them all tested regularly and have a very good handle on it.
 
The majority of bats in UK collections seem to be housed in free-flight aviaries without barriers between the space and visitors. I have visited such spaces at both Shepreth (an enclosed embankment in nocturnal lighting) and ZSL London Zoo (a diurnal rainforest walkthrough, though London does also have some bats behind glass in the nocturnal-portion of this house)

Rabies isn't a big issue in the UK, as the virus isn't present and circulating in the environment, and is only very-occasionally present in a few wild bats, so the risk of catching rabies from captive zoo bats in the UK is probably virtually non-existent

Bats and rabies FAQ's - Bats and health in the UK - Bat Conservation Trust
 
Jambi said:
As for concerns about rabies, I would imagine any Zoo that keeps free-flying bats would have them all tested regularly and have a very good handle on it.
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There is not a live-animal test for rabies. Diagnosing rabies in an animal involves examining brain tissue from 3 distinct parts of the brain. Rabies is not present in the bloodstream- the only way to test for rabies is by euthanizing the animal.

Bats can be vaccinated against rabies, but general protocol in the US is that if you have contact with a bat, you either need to have that bat tested for rabies or you need to receive shots- and I'm unsure how "this bat lived in a zoo" would complicate that response, which is the core of my question. Wondering if anyone has any stories or knowledge about how a zoo WOULD handle a bat-contact incident.
 
Jihlava Zoo has a (rather) small african hut where you can get very close to Rodriguez fruit bats.

Haus des Meeres and Tiergarten Schonbrunn in Vienna both have free-flying fruit-bats in one of their greenhouses (the latter at least had, before they closed the rainforest house for renovations).

Parco Faunistico le Cornelle and the Zoo di Napoli both have greenhouses with bats as well.

My guess, logistically speaking, is that all the animals that come to be exhibited without physical barriers with guests are from vaccinated colonies/lines that got checked over time while individulas died and when there was no doubt that the animals were diesease-free they eventually got chosen to be close-up species: that is the best hypothetycal course of action that comes to mind when a mindful facility handles this type of situation.

Rabies is also not an issue everywhere in the world, sure there are sporadic cases, mainly with feral dogs, but that entirely depends on where you are.
 
filovirus said:
Wondering if anyone has any stories or knowledge about how a zoo WOULD handle a bat-contact incident.
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I'd be curious to know if there's ever been a reported instance of a zoo visitor being bitten by a captive bat; I've never heard of it happening before and couldn't find any news stories online.

One factor that I think could affect how it's handled is whether (in this hypothetical) the bat is able to fly off after biting someone - since if that happens it may well be impossible to know which bat out of thousands to euthanize and test.

This is an interesting question though, since rabid wild bats occasionally get found on zoo grounds here in the States - and since getting bitten by any mammal that is a common vector for rabies is usually taken very seriously here, even when the likelihood of an animal being infected is low (as you'd assume would be the case for a colony kept indoors).
 
Coelacanth18 said:
This is an interesting question though, since rabid wild bats occasionally get found on zoo grounds here in the States - and since getting bitten by any mammal that is a common vector for rabies is usually taken very seriously here, even when the likelihood of an animal being infected is low (as you'd assume would be the case for a colony kept indoors).
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This is a big part of why I'm interested. Omaha had this happen in 2021, though it was in the aquarium and not the Lied Jungle building. PEP is incredibly expensive in the US even with insurance- generally 1.5-7 thousand USD- and in this scenario 186 people needed it. Likely over 500k in costs for Omaha, since they paid for the treatments.

I imagine the logistics in the situation I've described are to just pay for the impacted guest's PEP and monitor the colony, but any insight into actual on-the-ground protocols would be much appreciated :)
 
Are there any outdoor bar walkthroughs in the US? They aren't as common as indoors ones here in Europe but do exist, Bristol had one for Livingstone's fruit bat.
 
Fallax said:
Are there any outdoor bar walkthroughs in the US? They aren't as common as indoors ones here in Europe but do exist, Bristol had one for Livingstone's fruit bat.
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Oakland and Disney's Animal Kingdom have outdoor walk-in bat exhibits, when I visited Oakland there were mesh barriers where I wanna say there were none beforehand? Disney's Animal Kingdom has glass-viewing windows and some open-fronted windows to my knowledge.
 
I am more concerned with the droppings of the animals more than the bites. I recall when I went to the Australia house of Budapest zoo there were some dubious puddles on the path that had branches of lyle’s flying foxes above it.

When I was at Pairi Daiza I didn’t even know that the crypt was a walk through enclosure which is why I couldn’t even find the path towards the other exhibits within there.
 
Until very recently ZooTampa housed Malayan flying foxes in a free flight space without visitor separation. At one time they also had a colony of Egyptian fruit bats in the main aviary (now "canopy aviary"). I worked with both and never heard of any issues with visitors.
 
Fallax said:
Are there any outdoor bar walkthroughs in the US?
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StoppableSan said:
Oakland and Disney's Animal Kingdom have outdoor walk-in bat exhibits, when I visited Oakland there were mesh barriers where I wanna say there were none beforehand? Disney's Animal Kingdom has glass-viewing windows and some open-fronted windows to my knowledge.
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Yeah I visited Oakland in late 2021 and it wasn't barrier-free at the time, there were mesh barriers separating the path from the exhibit.

Might also be worth noting that with some of these "walk-in" or "barrier-free" exhibits with flying foxes, the bats are rarely if ever close to visitors; all of their food and climbing platforms are set back from the walkway. Same is often true in tropical houses where they are free-flight, in many of these they stay high up and far from visitors. So not quite the same as the Egyptians at Omaha, for example - which really will fly all around people within inches of them and roost on ledges right above paths.
 
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