Endangered
Large flying fox
Pteropus vampyrus
Large flying fox is a bat in the family Pteropodidae (order Chiroptera) — Pteropus vampyrus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
As is common with most megabats, it has a fox-like face. The color and texture of the coat differ between sexes and age classes. Immature individuals are almost all dull gray-brown.
It weighs 0.65–1.1 kg (1.4–2.4 lb) and has a wingspan of up to 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in).
Range and habitat
The large flying fox ranges from Malay Peninsula, to the Philippines in the east and Indonesian Archipelago of Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Timor in the south. In certain areas, the bat prefers coastal regions, but it can also be found at elevations up to 1,370 m (4,490 ft). Flying foxes inhabit primary forest, mangrove forest, coconut groves, mixed fruit orchards, and a number of other habitats.
Manual bat counts in the urban roosts of Miagao are conducted regularly by Sulu Garden Foundation to provide baseline estimates of the population and assess the threats that these bats face in the island.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Flying foxes will also eat mangoes and bananas. Flying foxes may circle a fruit tree before landing, and usually land on the tips of branches in an upright position, then fall into a head-down position from that they feed.
In crisis
As of 2022, the large flying fox is evaluated as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It meets the criteria for this designation because it is likely experiencing significant population decline. One threat to the large flying fox is habitat destruction.
This species is also hunted for bushmeat in Indonesia, contributing to its decline. The surveys showed a stable long-term trade with higher numbers per capita in economically less affluent areas and cities with larger Christian populations.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Large flying fox is 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 Large flying fox, Wikidata item Q649684. 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.
