Megabats and Microbats
The Tooan Tooan Creek Flying-fox Camp at Pialba in Hervey Bay, is a colony of Megabats! They belong to the Order Megachrioptera which literally means “ the big hand wings”. Also found on the Fraser Coast are many species of Microbats from the order Microchiroptera, "The Little Hand Wings".
Microbats are smaller carnivorous bats with Shrew like ancestors. They mostly feed on insects. Some catch fish. The Ghost Bat is a large Australian Microbat that consumes large insects as well as frogs, lizards and small mammals, including other bat species. One South American Vampire bat feeds on blood. Microbats play an important role in controlling insects like mosquitos, as well as many other night flying insects. Microbats use Echolocation to navigate and locate their insect prey. They are usually communal animals, living in large groups in caves and tree hollows.
Megabats are intelligent flying mammals, apparently related to primitive Primates like Flying Lemurs. Megabats are herbivores. They consume fruit, leaves, pollen and nectar. They are important pollinators, particularly of night flowering hardwoods and help maintain the genetic diversity of the forest. They are also important dispersers of seeds of native trees, particularly figs and palms. Food passes through a flying-fox relatively quickly (around 20 minutes) lightening the load for flight, while naturally dispersing the seeds, complete with a little fertiliser! In times of food shortage, their diet varies to include unripe fruit and leaves from some trees. They process these high fibre foods by chewing to a pulp and removing the liquids for digestion, by compressing the pulp between their tongue and their ridged palate. The squeezed pulp is compressed into a pellet, which is spat out (referred too as a spat!). Megabats use their excellent night vision, sense of smell and spatial perception to navigate and find food.
All three local species of colonial Megabats use the colony area at various times. The Tooan Tooan Creek Camp is in use for most of the year. However, sometimes they move to a mostly winter roost in the Botanical Gardens at the other end of the Tooan Tooan Creek Drainage.
The Colony is also a maternity camp for Black and Grey Headed Flying-foxes. They give birth to a single young around October and November. The young cling to their mother in flight for 4-5 weeks, before being left in the camp, while the mothers forage.
The largest Megabats in the colony are the Black Flying-foxes (Pteropus alectio). They are generally jet black in colour but they may have a mantle of dark brown to orange fur on the back. The legs are free of fur except near the body. Black Flying-foxes are present in the Hervey Bay area throughout the year.
The Grey Headed Flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) is a similar size to the Black Flying-fox. They are a little greyer in colour. The prominent collar of golden to copper yellow fur completely encircles the neck. They also have fur on the legs right down to the toes. They are highly nomadic and their numbers in the colony vary from very few to many thousands.
The Little Red Flying-foxes (Pteropus scapulatus) usually arrive in autumn, or earlier if there are cyclones in the north. Their arrival really does make the Tooan Tooan camp a “mega” bat colony. Aggregations of fifty to one hundred thousand are common. At rare times they arrive by the millions! The Little Red Flying-foxes usually move on after a few weeks in their complex migrations, following the blossoming of night flowering hardwood trees and tea trees [Melaleuca]. The Little Red Flying-foxes are smaller than the other two species, and are covered with reddish to light brown fur. They are easily recognisable in flight because of their semi-transparent wings.
The spectacle of many thousands of Megabats rising from the Tooan Tooan Camp at dusk is a truly awesome natural phenomenon, marvelled at by locals and tourists alike. The first to rise are the Little Red Flying-foxes, spiralling around the above the colony area before emerging in orderly streams. Columns of bats, sometimes kilometres long, snake their way toward their chosen feeding grounds in coastal forests as well as the forests of Fraser Island.
