Critically Endangered
Aru flying fox
Pteropus aruensis
Aru flying fox is a bat in the family Pteropodidae (order Chiroptera) — Pteropus aruensis, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The fronts of their heads are a combination of gray, black, and yellowish-white. The backs of their heads are rust-colored, and their chins are a deep red. Their necks are rust or rust-brown in color, creating the appearance of a chestnut collar.
Their forearms are 190–191 mm (7.5–7.5 in) long.
It was described by Wilhelm Peters in 1867.
Range and habitat
The Aru flying fox is a Critically Endangered species of megabat found in the Aru Islands in Indonesia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
It is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN and is listed on CITES appendix II. This species is possibly extinct. In 2017, a statistical model assessed the extinction probability of 23 mammal species that have been missing since the 19th century.
The Aru flying fox was one of the five species that the model determined was almost certainly extinct. The IUCN currently lists this species as critically endangered on the basis that there are most likely fewer than 50 remaining.
Aru flying fox is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Aru flying fox, Wikidata item Q135144. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
