Scientific Illustration

biomedicalephemera:

Fruit bat of the subfamily Pteropodinae

The megabats of the Pteropodinae include the largest bats in the world: the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox (Acerodon jubatus) and the Large Flying Fox (Pteropus vampyrus), also known as the Malaysian Flying Fox.

The teeth of the family Pteropus, and especially of the subfamily Pteropodinae, are specially designed to rip open and grind up fruits, both juicy and fleshy. The large canines allow them to slash into thick skins, and the dextrous tongue and molars that are good for chewing (but not continued grinding) make an ideal dentition for most South Pacific fruits. Some fruit bats consume vegetation, pollen, or nectar, but Pteropodinae consumes almost exclusively fruit.

Fruit bats lack a tail and the ability to echolocate, like all Old-World bats. They have very good eyesight, and are thought to have split off from microbats (the New-World bats, including all of the carnivorous bats) during the Eocene epoch, around 45 million years ago.

Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur. J.C.D. Schreber, 1774.