BATS! very large bats

For Halloween, the Lubie Bat Conservancy opens for 1 day - allowing the public in to view their HUGE fruit bat residents.  We drove over to Gainesville to see these critters for ourselves, especially since Fred had considered volunteering here but changed his mind when he learned every volunteer was required to have the  rabies vaccine!                                                                

there are about 80 bats living here -  mostly from Malaysia (thank goodness) .


The conservancy studies the animals, and has a breeding program, but doesn't do any rescue work.

The bats were mostly "hanging around" in their various enclosures, but were surprising active walking around the mesh ceiling and visiting the fruit feeding stations.

This guy has a 6 foot wingspan.  they call them flying foxes - and they do have a fox-like face, but those leathery wings and long gripping fingers and toes take away all the cute cuddly fox imagery, 

they do have really big teeth!

I thought is was hilarious that they also had the bloodmobile on site - in case anyone was willing to donate