Family Gathering

Fruit eating bats (Artibeus sp.) - San Martin Department, Peru

 

 

A cluster of bats roosting underneath a large frond in Peru. On a night hike I spotted a lot of bat activity around a frond so I stayed and watched a while and saw a flurry of bats in the area some of which brought back fruit to eat underneath the leaf. So sure enough I came back with a longer lens the next day and snapped a shot of these bats hanging out during the day. I don't know what species this is but they look to be in the Artibeus genus which I have encountered before in Central and South America. I didn't notice at the time that I was taking the photo but if you look very carefully you can see a few tan ovals that look like seeds stuck to the bats in the upper left of the of the clump further examination at higher resolutions reveal quite a few of these scattered throughout. These are actually ectoparasitic flies in the Trichobius genus. I had not heard of them before but they're pretty amazing, they spend nearly their entire lives on bats and many species are very host specific and only occur on one species of bat. Wish I'd gotten a closer look at them. As is I saw the bats in this location for a few days but eventually the frond wilted and they moved on to a fresher home.

Done