The lesser Mariana fruit bat became extinct before scientists had a chance to learn about its biology or behavior.
The lesser Mariana fruit bat, a mysterious cousin of a larger bat species also found on the Pacific island of Guam ‘Pteropus tokudae’, has long been considered a rare species. Like many fruit bats, the Lesser Mariana species had a small, fox-like face and a brown, furry body; this is its alternative name ‘Mariana- or Guam- flying fox’led to the emergence of .
In the 1960s, a survey of dozens of bats hunted by local people turned up only one specimen of the Lesser Mariana fruit bat, the BBC reported. It was a female shot at Tarague Escarpment on the north coast of Guam. She was nursing and apparently must have been nursing a young cub that flew away after being shot, nearly dying.
This female bat was the third Lesser Mariana fruit bat specimen studied by Western scientists in recorded history. Previously, two males were collected by a naturalist in the 1930s. These sparse records reveal that this bat was medium-sized, about 15 cm long, with a wingspan of more than half a meter.
Lesser Mariana fruit bat, which includes some of the largest bats in the world ‘megabat’ It belonged to his family. We know almost nothing about the biology of this fruit bat; for example, what food it likes or when it breeds. Other large bat species on Guam ‘Pteropus mariannus’We don’t know how it interacts with . The lesser Mariana fruit bat was an almost obscure species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared it extinct after no sightings for decades.
Tigga Kingston, Texas Tech University “The truth is, if the Little Mariana fruit bat were actually still there, it would probably have emerged by now.” said.
One of the questions that remains in mind is whether the Little Mariana fruit bat originates from another island.
Kingston is the reason we lose this species ‘tragedy’ because it probably played an important role in plant pollination or seed dispersal.
