Did You Know? Taiwan’s Biggest Bat Has a Fox’s Face, and Only About 200 Are Left

It’s Halloween week, so let’s talk bats. Specifically, Taiwan’s biggest one: the Formosan flying fox (台灣狐蝠). It has a fox-like face, big dark eyes and a fluffy golden collar, and its wings can stretch up to about one meter across. It also doesn’t care about blood at all. This bat is a fruit lover.

A Fruit Bat With a Golden Collar

The Formosan flying fox is Taiwan’s own subspecies of the Ryukyu flying fox, a bat found on islands from southern Japan down to the northern Philippines. Taiwan’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency describes it as the island’s largest bat. It feeds on fruit, flowers and young shoots, which makes it an important pollinator and seed-spreader for coastal forests. Its favorite foods include the fruits of the Indian almond tree (欖仁), the Alexandrian laurel (瓊崖海棠) and the septic fig (稜果榕). These are all common seaside trees, so this is very much a beach-town bat.

From Thousands on Green Island to a Handful

Its old stronghold was Green Island. Researchers estimate the island held around 2,000 of them before the 1970s. Then came commercial hunting. A 2022 study in Zoological Studies traces a dramatic crash from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, and habitat loss made it worse. In 1989 the flying fox was listed as an endangered protected species under Taiwan’s new Wildlife Conservation Act. Recent counts on Green Island find only around ten left.

The Plot Twist: A City Colony in Hualien

The species didn’t vanish, though. It just moved. Today Taiwan has an estimated 200 to 250 Formosan flying foxes in total. The largest colony lives on remote Guishan (Turtle) Island off Yilan. The surprise newcomer is Hualien City, where about 50 now live. They feed along the Meilun River and roost in campus trees, including at Hualien Girls’ Senior High School. Researchers have noticed that the city bats eat more garden and farm plants than their island cousins. Urban Hualien has basically become a fruit buffet with a sea view.

How to Be a Good Bat Neighbor

• Look up at dusk, and keep your distance. Watch quietly, and never use a flash or try to wake one.
• Leave the fruit trees alone. Hualien residents have warned that heavy tree-pruning in the bats’ hot spots destroys their food and roosts.
• Remember it’s protected. Disturbing or capturing one is against the law.

The flying fox joins our growing list of Taiwan’s wild underdogs, alongside the leopard cat, the pangolin and the grey-faced buzzard. This Halloween, skip the vampire bats and root for the one with the golden scarf. 🦇

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