Egyptian fruit bats in a cave in Maramagambo Forest, Uganda
20d 13h ago by piefed.social/u/JohnnyEnzyme in animals from media.piefed.social
The photographer actually had a pretty harrowing experience after taking this shot, because after he'd removed his protective gear as he exited the cave, the colony suddenly decided to exit in order to feed. He got hit with burning guano in one eye, and these bats evidently commonly had Marburg virus, which is similar to Ebola. He had potentially a couple weeks left to live at that point...
Here's more of his awesome stuff:
https://www.joelsartore.com/photos-videos/
And his Nat'l Geo article telling the tale:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120121075053/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/11/albertine-rift/sartore-essay
Oh wow, glad I remembered to come back and read this!
Between the deadly bat poo, freight trains of bees, and mountains of flies, this is why I will never get the Mrs convinced we need to go to Africa! 🤣
I'm sure there are some perfectly wonderful places to visit in Africa, but I'm not sure what they'd be off the top of my head. Maybe Tanzania and Morocco, for very different reasons.
Btw, I felt a little guilty slanting bats like this, as if they're little more than disease vectors. They're also special creatures good for pest control and such. I'll have to do a tribute post, in future...
Bats are great! Our uncle was a park ranger at Carlsbad for many years giving bat talks, so we were raised pro-bat.
I had some animal houses I got assigned to talk about today so I did cover bats a bit. I learned properly built bat houses help mitigate things like that white nose fungus that was killing tons of bats a few years back by keeping temperatures at a high enough level that it kept that stuff from growing.
It's not like the bats want to get sick either! 😆 Perhaps it's just because they are fellow mammals some of their illnesses can jump to us more readily.
IIRC, genetically bats may actually be primates' closest living branch of mammals. So yeah, definite vector potential there.
Really?! Genetics are wild!
Reading about the tapir the other day surprised me as it said they were odd toes ungulates, so they're close to horses and rhinos even though they look like pigs.
Oh man, I'm always getting odd-toed & even-toed ungulates mixed up.
I still make stupid mistakes like thinking the hippopotamus ("river horse" in old Greek) are in the equus / horse clade because of the name and the shape of their heads, and of course, they're not even in the same group of ungulates. :S
It's always one of my biggest surprises learning about a new animal who they are and aren't related to. There are so many where they'll look for sure to be related to something, like the tapir and the pig, but then there are other things that are so opposite, like (no example ready 😅).
...so opposite like hyraxes (which look kind of like small rodent-marsupials) and elephants, and yet it turns out that along with sea cows they're their own closest-living relatives.
Exactly! Like who would ever figure that out on their own?!
I always love seeing bats. They're our mosquito decimating flying cousins. I always cheer them on. I just avoid cuddling them and it usually works out ok.
I like seeing them fly around the neighborhood. I'll take bats over skeeters any day! (Night?)
Maramagambo is a sick name tho.