The bat experts, led by villagers, descended through a cave entrance on the remote island of Vanua Balavu in Fiji. They slid down a rock face, swam in an underground pool, climbed over piles of guano, and emerged into a cathedral-sized cave. According to Chris Helgen, a mammal expert and senior scientist at the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney, it was “absolutely crowded” with Pacific free-tailed bats. (Empalonura simicaudata).
Thousands of animals filled the cave like a cloud. Helgen could feel the gentle rustle of her wings as she soared around him in the darkness. “It was a breathtaking moment,” he says. The April expedition, led by the nonprofit Conservation International, not only discovered the largest known bat cave in the Pacific Islands, where the animal population is conservatively estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 animals. Researchers also found new hope for a creature they feared is rapidly approaching extinction.
Pacific free-tailed bats have soft, chocolate-brown fur and weigh just five grams, the same as a nickel or piece of paper. A few million years before humans sailed across the Pacific Ocean and settled one island after another, these tiny bats made the same amazing journeys—in the air. A related species is the slightly larger Brazilian bulldog bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)It can fly 160 kilometers per night.
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