Fruit bats | Pteropodidae

Vleerhonden | Zorros voladores

Large bats that must live by their eyes and their nose: the eyeball is big, the muzzle long as a dog's, and fruit and blossom are found by sight and smell. Of the whole family only the genus to which the European species belongs also steers by echo, and that call is not made in the larynx but clicked with the tongue against the palate — precise enough to allow roosting deep inside dark caves, which most of its relatives cannot do. The ear rim forms an unbroken ring and there is no tragus; besides the thumb, the second finger also bears a claw. The cheekteeth are broad and blunt: the pulp is pressed out, the juice swallowed and the fibre spat out as a pellet. Neither hibernation nor torpor occurs, and insects are not eaten. Within the area of this guide one species lives in large cave colonies in the eastern Mediterranean.