00:01What's new at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park? We have a new bat house that
00:06consists of 13 Rodriguez fruit bats.
00:08Yeah, it makes that place! That's hilarious!
00:11Oh, that is so cute.
00:17The Rodriguez fruit bat is from one small island east of Madagascar. All of the
00:22individuals in our collection are about three feet across when their wings are
00:27expanded. They live off a diet of primarily fruits and vegetables. We make
00:32up a special slurry, we call it, which is composed of some bird diet and primate
00:38diet and also some nectar and other supplements. And then we also offer several
00:43different types of fruits and vegetables cut up over the course of the day.
00:50These bats don't have much of a history working with people, so our goal is to
00:54work closely with them so we can accomplish a couple of important things
00:58with them, like getting weekly weights on the whole group, as well as carrying them
01:05around from one area to the other, transporting them, stuff that we can
01:08start now so that they can do it with us with low stress in the future.
01:15Primarily, the Rodriguez fruit bat is endangered because it has such a limited
01:21distribution on the earth. It is limited to only one small island in the Indian
01:25Ocean and that island is subject to habitat destruction by humans as well as
01:31natural disasters.
01:33Right now we have five males and eight females and since we mixed the males and
01:39females together for the first time in October, we've already seen lots of
01:44breeding activity in the colony. So we would expect some newborns sometimes within the
01:50next few months.
