Insectivorous bats in captivity

Vulpes

Vulpes

Well-Known Member
Can insectivorous bat species be maintained in captivity? are there any examples of these animals on display? I know that injured bats with ripped wings are sometimes maintain in small pet tanks and used for education being fed mealworms, but could fully flighted bats be maintained in a bat house like we see for fruit bats? what would they eat?
 
I was thinking about this earlier in the week, I don't think I've heard of insect eating bats kept in zoos. I think they could be kept, though aside from mealworms, what else could they be fed? Crickets?
 
I've seen insectivorous bats in several US zoos. The Phoenix Zoo used to keep pallid bats, San Diego had big brown bats for a time, and The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum I believe still maintains at least one species.
 
I saw a small group in the Grzimek House at Frankfurt Zoo in 2004 but I can't recall which species.

NZ short-tailed bats have been kept in captivity in NZ but they feed largely on the ground so are a bit easier than typical insectivorous bats.
 
I have friends who worked in a rescue centre for injured wild European bats. They easily take insects from the hand or bowl. However, they are inactive and hidden most of the time. They are also sometimes kept in labs for research on echolocation etc.

Bronx zoo several decades ago had some insectivorous bats in World of Darkness. Apparently, visitors could even watch Bulldog Bats Noctilio leporinus catching small fish.

Maybe more interesting would be African Yellow-winged Bat, which is partially active by day and more colorful. But I hever heard of that one in a zoo...

BTW - bats can fly with quite big holes in their wing membranes, and they normally grow back and close.
 
I saw some pictures in the gallery of Ghost bats in Adelaide zoo, they are insectivorous but I think they will also take other bats and frogs etc. I wonder if small European species were kept in a cage big enough to allow them to fly would they ever adapt to eating mealworms from a bowl? or would they prefare to feed on the wing? A blue bottle culture could perhaps be a solution? they are easy to breed in large numbers. or perhaps a wax moth culture?
 
I remember hearing that New Forest Nature Quest (now the New Forest Wildlife Park) kept Pipistrelle Bats in the Night Barn.
 
If you check out this link, the somewhat new Life On The Rocks exhibit at Arizona Sonora Desert Museum was supposed to have California Leaf Nosed Bats that emerge at dusk into a large mesh enclosure to actively hunt flying insects.

However, it seems to me they never actually happened. The last time I was there (several months ago), I do recall seeing one bat behind glass in a crevice. Not sure what kind it was. The problem is, you cannot see them after dusk anyway. During summer, they stay open until 10pm on Saturday nights. The first summer this opened, you could go through it at night. They even had built in small lights inside the underground burrows for night viewing. But then some visitor or visitors complained about seeing wild rattlesnakes on the grounds and they had to close off this entire area at dusk. So they have this great exhibit, with built in night lights and night flying bats that no one can ever see.
 
Vulpes said:
I wonder if small European species were kept in a cage big enough to allow them to fly would they ever adapt to eating mealworms from a bowl? or would they prefare to feed on the wing?
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Hi,

These bats were kept in adapted aquarium tanks, and when they recovered, they were let out to fly in the mid-sized room.

I don't think bats have problems adapting to eating stationary food. Many or most bats also hunt insects sitting on leaves etc. And also birds like bee-eaters, which normally feed on flying insects, quite easily learn feeding from the bowl.
 
Quite recently I went on a bat course in Epping Forest, and the person running it has several rescued bats of three species (common pipistrelle, Leisler's and an American big brown), and apparently they can be fairly easy to train to feed on mealworms from a bowl. Apparently some would be easier to train than others becauses some species (particularly long-eared bats) feed by picking insects off leaves.

By the way, I can remember seeing pipistrelle bats at the New Forest Wildlife Centre, next to the indoor viewing for the badgers.
 
DesertRhino150 said:
Quite recently I went on a bat course in Epping Forest, and the person running it has several rescued bats of three species (common pipistrelle, Leisler's and an American big brown), and apparently they can be fairly easy to train to feed on mealworms from a bowl. Apparently some would be easier to train than others becauses some species (particularly long-eared bats) feed by picking insects off leaves.

By the way, I can remember seeing pipistrelle bats at the New Forest Wildlife Centre, next to the indoor viewing for the badgers.
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Usually bat displays in zoos do not go beyond the cutesy ...

It would be really nice if zoos would invest in some imaginative bat house-nocturnal displays for native species .... :D
 
While checking JAZA zoos today I saw that both Tama zoo and Ueno zoo keeps each one a different species of genus Pipistrellus.
 
Kakapo said:
While checking JAZA zoos today I saw that both Tama zoo and Ueno zoo keeps each one a different species of genus Pipistrellus.
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And now checked Hiroshima City Asa Zoological park and it keeps Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, Tadarida insignis and Nyctalus aviator!
 
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