November 29, 2023 • 34 mins
Send us a Text Message with what batty adventures you’ve been up to this summer!
S5E48 Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands is home to 90% of the world's captive population of Livingstone's fruit bats. With an estimated 1300 in the wild, this captive breeding programme is vital to the survival of the species in a disaster event. We join Dominic Wormell inside the bat enclosure as he explains how they care for the colony and how the bats are received by the visiting public.
Discover more about the colony here
Have a listen to our other zoo episode from Chester Zoo
More about the species on the BCI website
Please leave us a review or star rating if your podcast app allows it because it helps us to reach a wider audience so that we can spread the word about how great bats are. How to write a podcast review (and why you should).
Got a story to share with us? Please get in touch via comms@bats.org.uk
Bats are magical but misunderstood. At BCT our vision is a world rich in wildlife where bats and people thrive together. Action to protect & conserve bats is having a positive impact on bat populations in the UK. We would not be able to continue our work to protect bats & their habitats without your contribution so if you can please donate. We need your support now more than ever: www.bats.org.uk/donate Thank you!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve Roe (00:07):
Hello, you're listening to the award winning
podcast of the Bat ConservationTrust BatChat. I'm Steve Roe.
And this is episode three ofseries five.
Yes, hello, this podcast is foranyone with a fascination and
the amazing nocturnal mammalsthat fill our skies at night.
(00:28):
And we're back continuing with abrand new series. If you don't
know by now, episodes will bereleased every other Wednesday
from now until the spring. Ifyou're new to BatChat, welcome
along. I'm Steve Rowe. I'm anecologist and in my spare time a
trustee for the Bat ConservationTrust. This summer I had the
opportunity to head out to theisland of Jersey which is the
largest of the Channel Islandsof the British Isles. Whilst
(00:50):
there I couldn't resist poppinginto Jersey zoo owned by the
Durrell Wildlife ConservationTrust, established by
conservationist Gerald Durrellin 1959. They have a captive
breeding programme for a colonyof Livingstone's fruit bats,
which make up 90% of the globalcaptive population. And with
just 1000, estimated to be leftin the wild, this population is
(01:11):
essential for the survival ofthe species. We're joined
Dominic Wormell inside theenclosure as he explains how the
colony is managed on a dailybasis.
Dominic Wormell (01:23):
Come down, she's very uncoordinated.
There's an old Rodricks backthere called them Denzel. So
he's, so every single that inhere has a name, every single
bath has transformed a chip. Andthe beauty of that is that we
also you want to manage thatcolony on individual basis,
(01:44):
every single batch is checkedthree times a day, every single
batch is made of own medicalrecords, its own behaviour
records, everything. So if youdon't have that individual
knowledge, you can't work outthings like inter birth periods,
you know, social violence. Andbecause we know every single bat
in here, we've had some reallyinteresting studies on their
(02:05):
social behaviour, and how thatrelates to their cortisol
levels, individual bats thatmaybe have higher urinary
cortisol levels have a lowersocial ranking, found now that
they do have these groups thatthey have friends that they
stick with, that hasimplications on how you separate
(02:28):
that off. So some banks like tostay with this bunch. Now that's
like, you know, standard error.
So we're really quite unique inthat I think other institutions
that maybe have bats in the UK,they don't manage them on an
individual basis, or count themevery single time, you know,
which I personally I think hereally should do to actually
because they're the same as ifyou're managing a primate you
(02:51):
know, there's a lot of socialbehaviour, there's a lot of
things that can go wrong on adaily basis with an individual
bat. So you've you've got to behonest, our biggest problem
although this is a nice big areahere and they can fly right
round in this sort of elongateddonut that we've created in one
loop right round is almost 100metres. And we've seen bats go
five 600 metres and continuousfly which is is great to see is
(03:16):
the fact that you know you'vegot your roof sight and your
feet sight are essentially thesame space and obviously in the
wild fruit bats will go in manykilometres, you know, some like
you know, the Tirpitz fan Paris,fly over to Northern Sumatra,
(03:36):
and then back to the MalayPeninsula. And so in that sense,
you're not bad animals aren't,they're not going to be as fit
as wild animals nowhere near asfit. And so managing that is
quite a bit of a challenge, youknow, so you do have lots and
lots of feed sights and willvary where we put food so we can
keep the colony kind of movingaround as it were, but also to
(03:58):
try and break down and that sortof dominance hierarchy, which
those dominant male backs whathands up then we've been really
stingy and they can lose theability to fly because they're
gonna it's going to stay rightso good site for food, it's a
good site for a heat source, I'mjust gonna stay here and my
breathing opportunities weincreased because I have more
(04:21):
females coming into that area.
So um, she's not aggressive soshe'll just sort of prompt you
to say I'm here. Give me a pieceof banana.
Steve Roe (04:36):
And you said I mean we've come into this like say
doughnut shape and it's it'salways wet outside. And we've
come in and all the kits gonereally humid and it's really hot
and humid in here. It's verydifferent to I've seen in other
institutions where I'm this isvery lush and green. It's really
nice John it tell us a bit aboutthe history of the building when
it was built and, and why you'vegone through this really nice
doughnut shape and, and all thelush green vegetation.
Dominic Wormell (04:58):
Yeah well actually the vegetation usually
looks a lot better later on inthe year, but ya know, it was it
was there was two driving forcesreally one we really needed to
give the bats more space becausethey weren't flying. And we knew
that we had to get them fitterif we were going to increase our
breeding success. And you know,back then we didn't, we didn't
(05:18):
have much money like or anyconservation charity, we're
always skinned as it were. Andso we hit on the idea that let's
get let's get a second handtomato tunnel. Yeah, so he got
one second and tomato tomahto,which literally cost peanuts.
For us, it was almost given tous. And then we dug out the
floor of that. So we immediatelycreated this height. And then to
(05:42):
that we added another tunnel,tomato Tang, each of these
tunnels is 40 metres long. Andwe dug out the valley again. So
we've created this great bigelongated doughnut, so the bats
could fly around. And the reasonyou know it's making it cheap
(06:03):
was one, we didn't have muchmoney. But also, we wanted to
use recycled material as much aspossible, we didn't want to
build a sort of Crystal Palacebuilt of glass and heated with
oil. Because that the message ofthat was so unsustainable, and
we need a message of, you know,if we're going to save lives
since fruit bats, we need tothink about living sustainably
(06:25):
on this planet. If the people onthe commercials are going to
have a future and survive on theanimals, they need to think
about sustainability on theirislands protecting their water
sources. And so, you know, I'dlike to think that we we need to
think of Island Earth, you know,we've got resources and we need
to protect everything we need toprotect the bardez T on planet
(06:47):
Earth, because that's key to theecosystem is working and
therefore supporting us. Sowe've used recycled tires that
have been packed with Earth asbuilding blocks with used glass
bottle windows to make aprettier effect. And which would
look lovely when the lighttwinkles through windy, we've
used straw bales for some of thewalls, and also mud plaster and
(07:13):
limewash. On the top of that,the tires. You know building the
tire walls was the materialsdon't cost anything. Yeah, but
obviously it takes a lot oftime. So we had to have 200
volunteers are smashing thesetires with Earth. And to fill a
one tire you're talking 2025minutes, it takes 23
(07:34):
wheelbarrows of Earth inside onetire. And when you finished, if
you've done it properly, thattire will weigh 85 to 100 kilos.
So that's a massive block that'simmovable. So it's really heavy.
But also, if you think aboutit's got a massive thermal
capacity. So because we'veessentially got two greenhouses
here, even if we got a littlebit of watery sunshine, like we
(07:57):
have today, and it's an overcastday, it's pretty miserable
outside, it's raining, but thesun is still quite high. So
you're getting a lot of radiantheat coming in here. So we've
got well will the building we'vegot to say 2324 degrees easily
by itself. So Will those tires,those 300 rammed earth tires go
(08:18):
up to 23 degrees centigrade. Andthen when the temperature drops
tonight, say to eight 910degrees, those tires will
radiate that heat, and so on. Onthis side, on the western side
of the wall, we've got this hugegabion wall. So it's 110 tonnes
of waste granite rocks, the samething there, it's all open. So
(08:41):
the hot air will go inside thatgranite wall, heat up that
granite wall. And that becomes abig heat sink as well. All this
earth that's in below how it wasscooped out from this, this
valley in huge amount of Earth,we start out the other side of
the granite wall. So that heatis going to come this way, it's
not going to go the other way.
And we kept both ends of thatwhen you go outside you see this
(09:04):
huge fire engine tires. So thoseare the old tires from the fire
engine at the airport. So theycap on and that's quite nice
when people leave they sort ofthink oh is recycled giant tires
there as well. And the topicalso have moped tires to sit on
and over a tire bench to sit on.
(09:28):
Which a lot of kids really lovehere and it sort of gives them
that message. But one of themost amazing things is that
people come in here and they seethat in the daylight. And if you
go to other institutions, otherzoos. Sadly, most of the time,
they just perpetuate thosebeliefs about bats, so they put
them in a cage. It's dark. It'salmost encouraging people to go
(09:50):
oh aren't that scary and they goAh, so you're reinforcing those
misconceptions about bats, whichare the most wonderful animals
on the planet as we all know.
But so by people coming in here,if we try and make it look like
a wonderful rainforest,Paradise, all the things we
don't want to lose, you see abat, it's beautiful orange eyes
(10:11):
and it's big Mickey Mouse ears.
It's essentially an upside downteddy bear that no one's gonna
hate. They see them interactingtogether and nursing their
pumps. It literally changespeople just there. And then in
that five minutes, and I've seenpeople come in, and it's bats
and they stop and they look atthem and they go silent, and
(10:32):
they think it's challengingtheir their their conception,
their perceptions of what a batis. And then once they've been
challenged, then they see some,then someone goes on a cue. And
some of their black angelsreally aren't they, when they
leave, they change their opinionhas changed. That's for me is
the biggest possible to seepeople's being changed. And of
(10:54):
course, the this bat is such awonderful looking bat. It's
probably the most fantasticspecies to do such as
Steve Roe (11:02):
its it has a bit more about living. You've got two
species in Eco, Livingston's.
And Rodriguez tells a bit moreabout the live instincts and
where did the originalpopulation for these come from?
Dominic Wormell (11:10):
Well, the limitations were, they come from
and Joanne Emma Healy, which aretwo islands in the Comoros goo,
which is the top of theMozambique Channel. So northwest
of Madagascar, back in the 80s,there was a guy in from Reading
University, we wanted to go outthere to sort of rediscover them
(11:32):
because there was thought to beextinct. Yeah. So he got a
little bit of money from GeraldDara, and he went out and
Expedition and he, and he didindeed find them high up in
roosting high up in themountains there. And then, you
know, subsequently, moreexpeditions, when it happened,
it was thought that they werereally, really in a critical
(11:53):
condition with a prognosis thatwasn't going to end with
hurricanes and typhoons. And itwas deemed that we needed to
have an assurance population inhuman care. And so we went out
in 9293, and 95. To collect 18individuals, it was really quite
(12:13):
difficult to collect females. Soit took those three expeditions
to get them. And they came backto Jersey. And we started the
captive population. The thenever bred as well as Rodriguez,
the rod reeks came back in 1978grabbed that time back then,
(12:35):
when Darryl was on Rodriguez,which is a tiny remote island in
the Indian Ocean, it was thoughtto be 70 to 100, individual
Rodriguez left, that's crazy.
But through a very, very healthycaptive population of Rodriguez.
Now, amazing things havehappened on restoration on the
Rodrique. Since there's 20,000,bats, Rotary through bats on
(12:55):
retreats now. But the broderiehas been a small amount they
bred really easily in captivity,and that popular captive
population grew really quite,quite well. But with a live
instance, the critical speciesout of the two species we have
here, it didn't breed at all.
Well, you know, and we were, youknow, up until about six, seven
(13:20):
years ago, we were still at verylow numbers, but lower 50
individuals in captivity. Andit's only in recent years that,
you know, through thedevelopment of given more space,
that we managed to expand thepopulation here. And now we're
exporting to other institutionssays three institutions that
(13:40):
have lived since fruit that isstill critically low activity.
Still only, you know, 1300 leftin the wild, you know, and you
know, fires, hurricanes,typhoons when you've got to a
species, so low, low stochasticevents can be just to be
devastating. But I'm reallyhopeful what's happening now, I
(14:02):
really think we, you know, wehad five perhaps this year,
we've had 16 Pups last year, youknow, if we can get another
institution to work with thespecies? Well, I really think we
can start to massively expandthis captive population. And
we're no way out of the woods inthe wild. You know, there's been
(14:23):
some amazing work in recentyears out in the wild, there's
been an NGO that was was helpedto be set up by Bristol
universe, Bristol zoo and Daraawildlife, because we were the
two institutions that worked ontheir captive population in the
early days. NGO was set up towork on the biodiversity on the
(14:47):
commodes, do surveys but alsowork with the local people on
agroforestry techniques andimproving soils. The whole thing
about looking at the ecosystemas a whole and the fact that
they need the ecosystem ifthey're going to survive. those
items, and that's been massivelybeneficial. But to restore a lot
of habitat is going to take along time that one of the key
(15:09):
things is protecting the, thekey resources of the limits as
fruit bats. And that's, it'sgonna be essential to work with
local communities to do that inthe short term, but the longer
term, trees are getting bitplanted into the ground. And so
if we can, if we can get the,you know, the, the habitat
(15:32):
that's there, you know, bufferedas much as possible, I think
we'll save the species in thewild.
Steve Roe (15:38):
And it's, I mean, these these guys won't be
released into the wild once thathabitat is restored, if that
wild population doesn't bounceback, is to very long term plan,
perhaps to think about doingsome sort of release programme
Dominic Wormell (15:48):
here. Yeah, I think, you know, if tragedy
struck, you know, you need tohave animals. So you're always
trying to manage animals in away that they you could release
them, I wouldn't release theseas they are at the moment,
they'd have to go into training,as it were, you know, I don't
know if you know, about the, youknow, the chuff release
programme that was done on thenorth coast here. And that was,
(16:11):
you had large cages that hadquite similar to this, where you
had captive chops that wereflying, and then you do a sort
of release, recall, release,recall, yeah, animals are
getting fitter all the time. Soyou could sort of see a picture
where captive bats went to thecommercials, and you could set
up a similar type thing in theCommonwealth. And indeed, I
(16:33):
personally think we need to bethinking about that there's the
on the Solomon Islands, there'sa monkey face back, which is
really getting critical. Now.
There is a bird bird centre,they're working with the
endangered bird species there,we need to think about working
with maybe the, the endangeredbat species on those islands.
And doing a captive set upthere. One of the reasons we had
(16:57):
we didn't do a captive set up inthe early days, because he was
so politically unstable on thecontrols, yeah, probably is not
the capacity there to do it. Butif you think about the Rodriguez
fruit that when the, when we setup the captive population, we
had a captive population in theBlack River ovaries and
Mauritius, with also a captivepopulation here as well. And now
(17:19):
you could argue that theRodriguez fruit back, there
isn't really a need to have acaptive insurance population, if
the numbers are up at 20,000.
But we're nowhere near that witha live instance, we've got a
long way to go. But if it is incaptivity, we'll use this
fantastic animals and Macedon asmuch as possible.
Steve Roe (17:42):
And in terms of the visitors, you have any sort of
ideas in terms of how manyvisitors come to see the
attraction? And what's whenyou've watched visitors engage
with the attraction? Do you sendthe takeaway? positive
experience? Yeah,
Dominic Wormell (17:52):
in Yeah, I do.
Very much. So and, and we many,many years ago, we did a little
kind of survey thing aboutpeople's favourite animal at the
zoo. And, you know, I think thegorillas came out on top. Yeah,
that's for people second withtheir own beat bears. I mean,
that was pretty remarkable.
(18:13):
Really, this is people you hearoften it sort of half past three
quarters before in thewintertime, screaming
landscaping about go to the bat,you might say, because it's
winter, and it's warm. But kidslove them, you know, kids, they
do absolutely love the bats. Andit's, it's kind of the our
societal conditioning. You know,but you can sometimes hear
(18:35):
adults say, no, no, the bats,you know, their pests, you know,
the, instead of alwaysconditioning their children, but
it's, I think, this changespublic's mind. And we did a
recent online survey, this wasactually a bit of research that
was done over the pandemicperiod, I don't know if you've
(18:56):
seen it. It's where we show somevideo of a keeper interacting
with a bat and, and sort oftalking about the bat and sort
of then, and then it wasactually me. And there's a
little puppet and you go, and ifyou look under the wing, there's
a pup here. And then gauging theresponse after that went out to
(19:18):
hundreds of people to see whatthey they thought before about
that. And then after watchingthe bat very closely, and it's
amazing how it changes people'sopinion, when they can see bats
in that different way. You know,to them, it's just essentially
it's an upside down puppy, isn'tit for people who don't really
know much about that, you know,many of you feel this way in
(19:39):
here, you know, incrediblematerial. You know, that muscle
really, isn't it? You know, it'sjust, we could go into the main
area. Yeah, if you want. Yeah, Imean, we'll get a lot of bats
coming down really close to ourbiggest problem we have now is
because we've got so many inthis area. Now. We need to move
somewhere. are so many of yourlisteners as a very large
(20:02):
greenhouse kicked out. Yeah. Isthat we're having to wash down
every day. And it's you know, wedon't want to limit breeding
with any contraceptive implants.
We just need to get thispopulation up to sort of to 300
as quickly as we can.
Steve Roe (20:22):
For expansion is definitely on the cards then.
Dominic Wormell (20:25):
Yeah, definitely. We've had five pups
already, we can go inside andsee some now if you're great.
That particular female, if youwant to give her some banana,
(20:45):
she will be she'll snatch it. Sodon't feed it with your fingers.
You see, that's the dominant Iforgotten. I think he's called
Nazarene. But he's got. So he'sgot he's not pregnant. He's fat.
He's overweight. So he's, helikes to hover around here and
keep this area. But that's afemale there. She looks like a
(21:09):
nice, good
Steve Roe (21:10):
white. And in terms of diet, you know, is it just
bananas? Or is it a mixture ofall sorts of bits and pieces?
No,
Dominic Wormell (21:16):
that when they don't get bananas at all, on
special occasions, like now,they'll get there's, there's no
UVB penetrating this building.
So what we have to do is coverfor that. We're not sure what
their requirements are in termsof vitamin D. I don't know how
much research has been on microat bats in that sense. But so we
(21:37):
give them this as a leafy toprimate pellet, this stuff is
red stuff in these baskets. Soit's almost like they're not
crazy, go crazy for where theywill eat it. But it takes a lot
of sort of nutritional basis.
And so you know, there's nocommercial sort of fruit that
(22:04):
nutritional food concentrates ina way I think there are some
things in in Australia,possibly, but over here, you
know, it's, so we use a primatedefeater wrong. And so that's
going to cover vitamin D, Bvitamins. Just it just gives us
(22:27):
reassurance that they aregetting certain box nutritional
boxes ticked, then in theafternoon, they will get
vegetables and fruit. And thatrotates. And a lot of that is
grown on our organic farm hereare a lot of the produce there.
So they'll also get things likeWillow bamboo in the router, as
forage. So you'll get some,because in the wild, they do eat
(22:52):
a lot of leaf. Yeah, so um, asyou know, probably know that you
know, they have a very shortalimentary canal. And they'll
spit out food, see, like thatone's just spat out. So that's a
lot of fibre, non digestiblefibre. So he's spitting that
out, because he was not going tohave a big, bulky gap like us
that can digest those suchthings. And so they you know,
(23:14):
we've measured their gut passagetime, and it's around sort of 50
minutes. It's craziness. Andagain, you know, if you think
about that, that's a sort ofweight saving thing, if you're
on a mammal that has heavymammal bones, as opposed to like
birds, but you're gonna have tothink about weight conservation
(23:34):
time. For now, we have a littlesort of little group who focuses
in on the banana.
Steve Roe (23:41):
Since when they become active in do flight, is
that is that all the way throughthe day was at nighttime, or
Dominic Wormell (23:47):
will it be more active overnight, if you can
imagine they in the wild, theywould have an active phase,
midday ish, but that's mainlyjust around their roof cycle was
around the roof, cyber, but thenwhat they'll do is they'll fly
off to their feed sites,wherever they might be that day,
and they'll use thermals forthat. And so they are they are
(24:10):
flying during the day, andthere'll be active sort of late
afternoon, early evening, mainlyand then they'll be at their
feed site most of that night,and then come back. But so what,
what we've done is obviously, wehave to try and fit it in around
keepers day because you know, wewant them to be a bit active
(24:30):
while we're here. So we put thatbreakfast in, that goes in at
10, half past 10. They're alittle bit active, then they're
checked. They're counted whilethey're roosting eight o'clock
in the morning, and then they'recounted again at half past 10
checked with their breakfastfeed, but then they get their
main vegetable and fruit feed atsort of three o'clock or three.
(24:54):
They're very active just beforethen. So then what we do is we
sort of hold that back a bitBecause let them know it's
arrived in the building, andthey're always around. And so
that's kind of simulating themflying off to their feed sites,
wherever they might be that day.
Then I know you've got somethingyou probably haven't feed this
(25:17):
one gently. Not snatcher. Eugenyou've kind of see that, you
know, quite dominant males willbe far more relaxed with humans.
So let's walk around this way,we're here and we'll go and see
some pups. This material,obviously, it's all off cuts of
people's gardens or astroturfand things like that. So but
(25:39):
it's nice in hardware, and isn'tit, it's hardware, and but it
also allows detritus to permeatethrough. So if you have two
layers, you're, you're creatinga filter bed. So if you if you
lift up that there, it's really,really quite clean. So yeah, so
you're filtering ruining things,probably is because we've got
(26:01):
this plant disease going on,it's not covering. So you can
see down there usually that theplants would basically eat all
this up very quickly, theseplants here don't seem
effective, they look prettygood. One of the things that you
see, obviously in captivity isthat mothers are more tolerant
than normal, they would be inthe wild. Yeah. And so that's
(26:22):
last year is pup is stillassociating with the mother. So
when that mother gives birththis year, that can be a
problem, because you might getcompetition for the nipples. And
that then sometimes what youhave to do is separate last
year's pap off, just while theyoung neonate is sort of getting
(26:42):
a foothold as it were at all ofthe sort of feed areas, because
they will have some little bitconflicts around the feed sites
is so soft. So if you're gonnaimagine the edge of that, that
wing in areas you want it to besoft, you don't want any so the
(27:02):
whole of this building paddedpillows down the middle,
everything soft. And that wasespecially important when we
were we introduced the bats intothis area because they couldn't
fly well at all. So we had tocreate a soft environment. And
Steve Roe (27:21):
that's why you're saying you've chosen some of
these larger leaf plants. So ifthere's a crash land and they've
got some soft land, and
Dominic Wormell (27:27):
then you know when the plants are in better
health than they will be laterin the year. We all try to scan
through your cupboard the wholefall. It's just a cushions like
those steps, they're sort oftires, soft tires in the
cupboard with astroturf. Yeah, Imean, it looks a lot better than
(27:47):
that. It looks terrible at themoment love these plants. So
we're just coming up to this isa group of mainly younger bats.
So these will be some pups overthe last last year in the year
before. So they're all you cantell. They're not territorial,
yet. They sort of hang outtogether and there's a Mother's
Day with a pup as well. Look howbeautiful their wing membranes.
(28:11):
The few of those little whitedots are where they've had
scraps before and it's thethumbnail. Some of the older
territorial males like that onewe saw over there they'll have
real peppered wings. This femaleshe can smell the banana. So if
you've got a bit of an honour wemight be lucky she might show
thatthe mums get quite some because
(28:36):
we give them a little bit ofextra banana we give the mums a
little bit of extra banana justto help this one here see the
pop up on the on the window.
(28:57):
This I think this is a nightmareso she's a good mother and they
get used to you know keep comingforward and giving them the
banana just takes that edge overhaving to frantically come
compete if they're not gettingenough she's she's she's a
(29:19):
dominant female so she was She'sno problem why as you'll get
say, like this. This guy here isThat's enough. And there's one
here called kadogo who's reallyquite strong. This one here.
He's got to keep an eye on makesure we get to know
Steve Roe (29:43):
we've got several puts together they're all
clearly made and and given birththe same time a year even in a
capitalist environment then,
Dominic Wormell (29:50):
yeah, it's different. At first it didn't
have any sort of seasonality,but we do see that. It's mainly
it starts sort of early Well midApril, May is the main pumping
month and someday we'll go righton to August in the wild. I
think it's mainly August you'llsee so you sort of when you go
(30:13):
into the wet season of fruitWeber's is higher for when
they're lactating. Becauseinitially, you know that their
resources here are pretty muchthe same all year round. They
appear to lose that seasonalitybut now they definitely appear
to be getting it back. So again,you've got two pups here we've
(30:35):
got a pop up there. And there'sa pup ship female showing us a
pup there next to the heap thenwe got over here that that
female with her pups, she'llcome over
(31:05):
with the with the pups, as withall bats, I suppose that the
little pup will just cling onlatched on to the nipples under
the arm. It's about three, threeand a half weeks, and then they
start to leave them at theirsite after feed, but up until
that point, most of the timethey will will carry them
(31:32):
one of the things that people docommenting on is the smell.
Unfortunately, they focus onthat more than the bats there's
no there's no denying that letgo. The problem is sometimes
you'll get a lot of themwell that's the youngster
(32:00):
they're probably near a wildWait, I would say is another
female here with a pop comingunder
Steve Roe (32:22):
and you were saying they have different areas. So
you've got groups that that saythey tend to stay in those
little groups
Dominic Wormell (32:29):
tend to Yeah, you'll say that females will
stay. There'll be several areaswhere they sort of congregate
with their parents. So if youlook behind you now you're
getting a lot of that showinginterest. Like I said, they got
this incredible sense of smellbut when you see people looking
at them now they're notscreaming. The other thing was
(32:54):
that the reason I got into thisis the mind weaves into nature
conservation. He was he was thefirst Warden on the island Ramin
and we used to go ask the guysare the kid wanting to do
something, I never thought Iwould work fruit bats or
tamarind because I came here onsummer school, and then I'll
(33:14):
apply for jobs, see whathappens. I've done a sort of
zoology degree and all the restof it. And then I wanted to go
to the rainforests. So came outto our work here and now went
out to Bolivia after a year tolook for little primates out
there. Now been in 34 years, soyou get trapped because you?
(33:36):
Yeah, the stories and the issuesthat you have you you have to
stay with them. Until someexperience.
Steve Roe (33:45):
That's great.
Dominic, thank you very much.
Dominic Wormell (33:46):
Cheers. Thank you. My pleasure.
Steve Roe (33:51):
A massive thanks to Dan for having me along for the
day. We've put a link in theshow notes to the Livingston's
page on the Jersey website. Haveyou enjoyed this instalment of
series five? If so, please tellthe world about Bat Chat on your
social media channels. And we'llbe back in two weeks time where
we'll be walking with bats. Seeyou then
Hello, you're listening to the award winning
podcast of the Bat ConservationTrust BatChat. I'm Steve Roe.
And this is episode three ofseries five.
Yes, hello, this podcast is foranyone with a fascination and
the amazing nocturnal mammalsthat fill our skies at night.
(00:28):
And we're back continuing with abrand new series. If you don't
know by now, episodes will bereleased every other Wednesday
from now until the spring. Ifyou're new to BatChat, welcome
along. I'm Steve Rowe. I'm anecologist and in my spare time a
trustee for the Bat ConservationTrust. This summer I had the
opportunity to head out to theisland of Jersey which is the
largest of the Channel Islandsof the British Isles. Whilst
(00:50):
there I couldn't resist poppinginto Jersey zoo owned by the
Durrell Wildlife ConservationTrust, established by
conservationist Gerald Durrellin 1959. They have a captive
breeding programme for a colonyof Livingstone's fruit bats,
which make up 90% of the globalcaptive population. And with
just 1000, estimated to be leftin the wild, this population is
(01:11):
essential for the survival ofthe species. We're joined
Dominic Wormell inside theenclosure as he explains how the
colony is managed on a dailybasis.
Dominic Wormell (01:23):
Come down, she's very uncoordinated.
There's an old Rodricks backthere called them Denzel. So
he's, so every single that inhere has a name, every single
bath has transformed a chip. Andthe beauty of that is that we
also you want to manage thatcolony on individual basis,
(01:44):
every single batch is checkedthree times a day, every single
batch is made of own medicalrecords, its own behaviour
records, everything. So if youdon't have that individual
knowledge, you can't work outthings like inter birth periods,
you know, social violence. Andbecause we know every single bat
in here, we've had some reallyinteresting studies on their
(02:05):
social behaviour, and how thatrelates to their cortisol
levels, individual bats thatmaybe have higher urinary
cortisol levels have a lowersocial ranking, found now that
they do have these groups thatthey have friends that they
stick with, that hasimplications on how you separate
(02:28):
that off. So some banks like tostay with this bunch. Now that's
like, you know, standard error.
So we're really quite unique inthat I think other institutions
that maybe have bats in the UK,they don't manage them on an
individual basis, or count themevery single time, you know,
which I personally I think hereally should do to actually
because they're the same as ifyou're managing a primate you
(02:51):
know, there's a lot of socialbehaviour, there's a lot of
things that can go wrong on adaily basis with an individual
bat. So you've you've got to behonest, our biggest problem
although this is a nice big areahere and they can fly right
round in this sort of elongateddonut that we've created in one
loop right round is almost 100metres. And we've seen bats go
five 600 metres and continuousfly which is is great to see is
(03:16):
the fact that you know you'vegot your roof sight and your
feet sight are essentially thesame space and obviously in the
wild fruit bats will go in manykilometres, you know, some like
you know, the Tirpitz fan Paris,fly over to Northern Sumatra,
(03:36):
and then back to the MalayPeninsula. And so in that sense,
you're not bad animals aren't,they're not going to be as fit
as wild animals nowhere near asfit. And so managing that is
quite a bit of a challenge, youknow, so you do have lots and
lots of feed sights and willvary where we put food so we can
keep the colony kind of movingaround as it were, but also to
(03:58):
try and break down and that sortof dominance hierarchy, which
those dominant male backs whathands up then we've been really
stingy and they can lose theability to fly because they're
gonna it's going to stay rightso good site for food, it's a
good site for a heat source, I'mjust gonna stay here and my
breathing opportunities weincreased because I have more
(04:21):
females coming into that area.
So um, she's not aggressive soshe'll just sort of prompt you
to say I'm here. Give me a pieceof banana.
Steve Roe (04:36):
And you said I mean we've come into this like say
doughnut shape and it's it'salways wet outside. And we've
come in and all the kits gonereally humid and it's really hot
and humid in here. It's verydifferent to I've seen in other
institutions where I'm this isvery lush and green. It's really
nice John it tell us a bit aboutthe history of the building when
it was built and, and why you'vegone through this really nice
doughnut shape and, and all thelush green vegetation.
Dominic Wormell (04:58):
Yeah well actually the vegetation usually
looks a lot better later on inthe year, but ya know, it was it
was there was two driving forcesreally one we really needed to
give the bats more space becausethey weren't flying. And we knew
that we had to get them fitterif we were going to increase our
breeding success. And you know,back then we didn't, we didn't
(05:18):
have much money like or anyconservation charity, we're
always skinned as it were. Andso we hit on the idea that let's
get let's get a second handtomato tunnel. Yeah, so he got
one second and tomato tomahto,which literally cost peanuts.
For us, it was almost given tous. And then we dug out the
floor of that. So we immediatelycreated this height. And then to
(05:42):
that we added another tunnel,tomato Tang, each of these
tunnels is 40 metres long. Andwe dug out the valley again. So
we've created this great bigelongated doughnut, so the bats
could fly around. And the reasonyou know it's making it cheap
(06:03):
was one, we didn't have muchmoney. But also, we wanted to
use recycled material as much aspossible, we didn't want to
build a sort of Crystal Palacebuilt of glass and heated with
oil. Because that the message ofthat was so unsustainable, and
we need a message of, you know,if we're going to save lives
since fruit bats, we need tothink about living sustainably
(06:25):
on this planet. If the people onthe commercials are going to
have a future and survive on theanimals, they need to think
about sustainability on theirislands protecting their water
sources. And so, you know, I'dlike to think that we we need to
think of Island Earth, you know,we've got resources and we need
to protect everything we need toprotect the bardez T on planet
(06:47):
Earth, because that's key to theecosystem is working and
therefore supporting us. Sowe've used recycled tires that
have been packed with Earth asbuilding blocks with used glass
bottle windows to make aprettier effect. And which would
look lovely when the lighttwinkles through windy, we've
used straw bales for some of thewalls, and also mud plaster and
(07:13):
limewash. On the top of that,the tires. You know building the
tire walls was the materialsdon't cost anything. Yeah, but
obviously it takes a lot oftime. So we had to have 200
volunteers are smashing thesetires with Earth. And to fill a
one tire you're talking 2025minutes, it takes 23
(07:34):
wheelbarrows of Earth inside onetire. And when you finished, if
you've done it properly, thattire will weigh 85 to 100 kilos.
So that's a massive block that'simmovable. So it's really heavy.
But also, if you think aboutit's got a massive thermal
capacity. So because we'veessentially got two greenhouses
here, even if we got a littlebit of watery sunshine, like we
(07:57):
have today, and it's an overcastday, it's pretty miserable
outside, it's raining, but thesun is still quite high. So
you're getting a lot of radiantheat coming in here. So we've
got well will the building we'vegot to say 2324 degrees easily
by itself. So Will those tires,those 300 rammed earth tires go
(08:18):
up to 23 degrees centigrade. Andthen when the temperature drops
tonight, say to eight 910degrees, those tires will
radiate that heat, and so on. Onthis side, on the western side
of the wall, we've got this hugegabion wall. So it's 110 tonnes
of waste granite rocks, the samething there, it's all open. So
(08:41):
the hot air will go inside thatgranite wall, heat up that
granite wall. And that becomes abig heat sink as well. All this
earth that's in below how it wasscooped out from this, this
valley in huge amount of Earth,we start out the other side of
the granite wall. So that heatis going to come this way, it's
not going to go the other way.
And we kept both ends of thatwhen you go outside you see this
(09:04):
huge fire engine tires. So thoseare the old tires from the fire
engine at the airport. So theycap on and that's quite nice
when people leave they sort ofthink oh is recycled giant tires
there as well. And the topicalso have moped tires to sit on
and over a tire bench to sit on.
(09:28):
Which a lot of kids really lovehere and it sort of gives them
that message. But one of themost amazing things is that
people come in here and they seethat in the daylight. And if you
go to other institutions, otherzoos. Sadly, most of the time,
they just perpetuate thosebeliefs about bats, so they put
them in a cage. It's dark. It'salmost encouraging people to go
(09:50):
oh aren't that scary and they goAh, so you're reinforcing those
misconceptions about bats, whichare the most wonderful animals
on the planet as we all know.
But so by people coming in here,if we try and make it look like
a wonderful rainforest,Paradise, all the things we
don't want to lose, you see abat, it's beautiful orange eyes
(10:11):
and it's big Mickey Mouse ears.
It's essentially an upside downteddy bear that no one's gonna
hate. They see them interactingtogether and nursing their
pumps. It literally changespeople just there. And then in
that five minutes, and I've seenpeople come in, and it's bats
and they stop and they look atthem and they go silent, and
(10:32):
they think it's challengingtheir their their conception,
their perceptions of what a batis. And then once they've been
challenged, then they see some,then someone goes on a cue. And
some of their black angelsreally aren't they, when they
leave, they change their opinionhas changed. That's for me is
the biggest possible to seepeople's being changed. And of
(10:54):
course, the this bat is such awonderful looking bat. It's
probably the most fantasticspecies to do such as
Steve Roe (11:02):
its it has a bit more about living. You've got two
species in Eco, Livingston's.
And Rodriguez tells a bit moreabout the live instincts and
where did the originalpopulation for these come from?
Dominic Wormell (11:10):
Well, the limitations were, they come from
and Joanne Emma Healy, which aretwo islands in the Comoros goo,
which is the top of theMozambique Channel. So northwest
of Madagascar, back in the 80s,there was a guy in from Reading
University, we wanted to go outthere to sort of rediscover them
(11:32):
because there was thought to beextinct. Yeah. So he got a
little bit of money from GeraldDara, and he went out and
Expedition and he, and he didindeed find them high up in
roosting high up in themountains there. And then, you
know, subsequently, moreexpeditions, when it happened,
it was thought that they werereally, really in a critical
(11:53):
condition with a prognosis thatwasn't going to end with
hurricanes and typhoons. And itwas deemed that we needed to
have an assurance population inhuman care. And so we went out
in 9293, and 95. To collect 18individuals, it was really quite
(12:13):
difficult to collect females. Soit took those three expeditions
to get them. And they came backto Jersey. And we started the
captive population. The thenever bred as well as Rodriguez,
the rod reeks came back in 1978grabbed that time back then,
(12:35):
when Darryl was on Rodriguez,which is a tiny remote island in
the Indian Ocean, it was thoughtto be 70 to 100, individual
Rodriguez left, that's crazy.
But through a very, very healthycaptive population of Rodriguez.
Now, amazing things havehappened on restoration on the
Rodrique. Since there's 20,000,bats, Rotary through bats on
(12:55):
retreats now. But the broderiehas been a small amount they
bred really easily in captivity,and that popular captive
population grew really quite,quite well. But with a live
instance, the critical speciesout of the two species we have
here, it didn't breed at all.
Well, you know, and we were, youknow, up until about six, seven
(13:20):
years ago, we were still at verylow numbers, but lower 50
individuals in captivity. Andit's only in recent years that,
you know, through thedevelopment of given more space,
that we managed to expand thepopulation here. And now we're
exporting to other institutionssays three institutions that
(13:40):
have lived since fruit that isstill critically low activity.
Still only, you know, 1300 leftin the wild, you know, and you
know, fires, hurricanes,typhoons when you've got to a
species, so low, low stochasticevents can be just to be
devastating. But I'm reallyhopeful what's happening now, I
(14:02):
really think we, you know, wehad five perhaps this year,
we've had 16 Pups last year, youknow, if we can get another
institution to work with thespecies? Well, I really think we
can start to massively expandthis captive population. And
we're no way out of the woods inthe wild. You know, there's been
(14:23):
some amazing work in recentyears out in the wild, there's
been an NGO that was was helpedto be set up by Bristol
universe, Bristol zoo and Daraawildlife, because we were the
two institutions that worked ontheir captive population in the
early days. NGO was set up towork on the biodiversity on the
(14:47):
commodes, do surveys but alsowork with the local people on
agroforestry techniques andimproving soils. The whole thing
about looking at the ecosystemas a whole and the fact that
they need the ecosystem ifthey're going to survive. those
items, and that's been massivelybeneficial. But to restore a lot
of habitat is going to take along time that one of the key
(15:09):
things is protecting the, thekey resources of the limits as
fruit bats. And that's, it'sgonna be essential to work with
local communities to do that inthe short term, but the longer
term, trees are getting bitplanted into the ground. And so
if we can, if we can get the,you know, the, the habitat
(15:32):
that's there, you know, bufferedas much as possible, I think
we'll save the species in thewild.
Steve Roe (15:38):
And it's, I mean, these these guys won't be
released into the wild once thathabitat is restored, if that
wild population doesn't bounceback, is to very long term plan,
perhaps to think about doingsome sort of release programme
Dominic Wormell (15:48):
here. Yeah, I think, you know, if tragedy
struck, you know, you need tohave animals. So you're always
trying to manage animals in away that they you could release
them, I wouldn't release theseas they are at the moment,
they'd have to go into training,as it were, you know, I don't
know if you know, about the, youknow, the chuff release
programme that was done on thenorth coast here. And that was,
(16:11):
you had large cages that hadquite similar to this, where you
had captive chops that wereflying, and then you do a sort
of release, recall, release,recall, yeah, animals are
getting fitter all the time. Soyou could sort of see a picture
where captive bats went to thecommercials, and you could set
up a similar type thing in theCommonwealth. And indeed, I
(16:33):
personally think we need to bethinking about that there's the
on the Solomon Islands, there'sa monkey face back, which is
really getting critical. Now.
There is a bird bird centre,they're working with the
endangered bird species there,we need to think about working
with maybe the, the endangeredbat species on those islands.
And doing a captive set upthere. One of the reasons we had
(16:57):
we didn't do a captive set up inthe early days, because he was
so politically unstable on thecontrols, yeah, probably is not
the capacity there to do it. Butif you think about the Rodriguez
fruit that when the, when we setup the captive population, we
had a captive population in theBlack River ovaries and
Mauritius, with also a captivepopulation here as well. And now
(17:19):
you could argue that theRodriguez fruit back, there
isn't really a need to have acaptive insurance population, if
the numbers are up at 20,000.
But we're nowhere near that witha live instance, we've got a
long way to go. But if it is incaptivity, we'll use this
fantastic animals and Macedon asmuch as possible.
Steve Roe (17:42):
And in terms of the visitors, you have any sort of
ideas in terms of how manyvisitors come to see the
attraction? And what's whenyou've watched visitors engage
with the attraction? Do you sendthe takeaway? positive
experience? Yeah,
Dominic Wormell (17:52):
in Yeah, I do.
Very much. So and, and we many,many years ago, we did a little
kind of survey thing aboutpeople's favourite animal at the
zoo. And, you know, I think thegorillas came out on top. Yeah,
that's for people second withtheir own beat bears. I mean,
that was pretty remarkable.
(18:13):
Really, this is people you hearoften it sort of half past three
quarters before in thewintertime, screaming
landscaping about go to the bat,you might say, because it's
winter, and it's warm. But kidslove them, you know, kids, they
do absolutely love the bats. Andit's, it's kind of the our
societal conditioning. You know,but you can sometimes hear
(18:35):
adults say, no, no, the bats,you know, their pests, you know,
the, instead of alwaysconditioning their children, but
it's, I think, this changespublic's mind. And we did a
recent online survey, this wasactually a bit of research that
was done over the pandemicperiod, I don't know if you've
(18:56):
seen it. It's where we show somevideo of a keeper interacting
with a bat and, and sort oftalking about the bat and sort
of then, and then it wasactually me. And there's a
little puppet and you go, and ifyou look under the wing, there's
a pup here. And then gauging theresponse after that went out to
(19:18):
hundreds of people to see whatthey they thought before about
that. And then after watchingthe bat very closely, and it's
amazing how it changes people'sopinion, when they can see bats
in that different way. You know,to them, it's just essentially
it's an upside down puppy, isn'tit for people who don't really
know much about that, you know,many of you feel this way in
(19:39):
here, you know, incrediblematerial. You know, that muscle
really, isn't it? You know, it'sjust, we could go into the main
area. Yeah, if you want. Yeah, Imean, we'll get a lot of bats
coming down really close to ourbiggest problem we have now is
because we've got so many inthis area. Now. We need to move
somewhere. are so many of yourlisteners as a very large
(20:02):
greenhouse kicked out. Yeah. Isthat we're having to wash down
every day. And it's you know, wedon't want to limit breeding
with any contraceptive implants.
We just need to get thispopulation up to sort of to 300
as quickly as we can.
Steve Roe (20:22):
For expansion is definitely on the cards then.
Dominic Wormell (20:25):
Yeah, definitely. We've had five pups
already, we can go inside andsee some now if you're great.
That particular female, if youwant to give her some banana,
(20:45):
she will be she'll snatch it. Sodon't feed it with your fingers.
You see, that's the dominant Iforgotten. I think he's called
Nazarene. But he's got. So he'sgot he's not pregnant. He's fat.
He's overweight. So he's, helikes to hover around here and
keep this area. But that's afemale there. She looks like a
(21:09):
nice, good
Steve Roe (21:10):
white. And in terms of diet, you know, is it just
bananas? Or is it a mixture ofall sorts of bits and pieces?
No,
Dominic Wormell (21:16):
that when they don't get bananas at all, on
special occasions, like now,they'll get there's, there's no
UVB penetrating this building.
So what we have to do is coverfor that. We're not sure what
their requirements are in termsof vitamin D. I don't know how
much research has been on microat bats in that sense. But so we
(21:37):
give them this as a leafy toprimate pellet, this stuff is
red stuff in these baskets. Soit's almost like they're not
crazy, go crazy for where theywill eat it. But it takes a lot
of sort of nutritional basis.
And so you know, there's nocommercial sort of fruit that
(22:04):
nutritional food concentrates ina way I think there are some
things in in Australia,possibly, but over here, you
know, it's, so we use a primatedefeater wrong. And so that's
going to cover vitamin D, Bvitamins. Just it just gives us
(22:27):
reassurance that they aregetting certain box nutritional
boxes ticked, then in theafternoon, they will get
vegetables and fruit. And thatrotates. And a lot of that is
grown on our organic farm hereare a lot of the produce there.
So they'll also get things likeWillow bamboo in the router, as
forage. So you'll get some,because in the wild, they do eat
(22:52):
a lot of leaf. Yeah, so um, asyou know, probably know that you
know, they have a very shortalimentary canal. And they'll
spit out food, see, like thatone's just spat out. So that's a
lot of fibre, non digestiblefibre. So he's spitting that
out, because he was not going tohave a big, bulky gap like us
that can digest those suchthings. And so they you know,
(23:14):
we've measured their gut passagetime, and it's around sort of 50
minutes. It's craziness. Andagain, you know, if you think
about that, that's a sort ofweight saving thing, if you're
on a mammal that has heavymammal bones, as opposed to like
birds, but you're gonna have tothink about weight conservation
(23:34):
time. For now, we have a littlesort of little group who focuses
in on the banana.
Steve Roe (23:41):
Since when they become active in do flight, is
that is that all the way throughthe day was at nighttime, or
Dominic Wormell (23:47):
will it be more active overnight, if you can
imagine they in the wild, theywould have an active phase,
midday ish, but that's mainlyjust around their roof cycle was
around the roof, cyber, but thenwhat they'll do is they'll fly
off to their feed sites,wherever they might be that day,
and they'll use thermals forthat. And so they are they are
(24:10):
flying during the day, andthere'll be active sort of late
afternoon, early evening, mainlyand then they'll be at their
feed site most of that night,and then come back. But so what,
what we've done is obviously, wehave to try and fit it in around
keepers day because you know, wewant them to be a bit active
(24:30):
while we're here. So we put thatbreakfast in, that goes in at
10, half past 10. They're alittle bit active, then they're
checked. They're counted whilethey're roosting eight o'clock
in the morning, and then they'recounted again at half past 10
checked with their breakfastfeed, but then they get their
main vegetable and fruit feed atsort of three o'clock or three.
(24:54):
They're very active just beforethen. So then what we do is we
sort of hold that back a bitBecause let them know it's
arrived in the building, andthey're always around. And so
that's kind of simulating themflying off to their feed sites,
wherever they might be that day.
Then I know you've got somethingyou probably haven't feed this
(25:17):
one gently. Not snatcher. Eugenyou've kind of see that, you
know, quite dominant males willbe far more relaxed with humans.
So let's walk around this way,we're here and we'll go and see
some pups. This material,obviously, it's all off cuts of
people's gardens or astroturfand things like that. So but
(25:39):
it's nice in hardware, and isn'tit, it's hardware, and but it
also allows detritus to permeatethrough. So if you have two
layers, you're, you're creatinga filter bed. So if you if you
lift up that there, it's really,really quite clean. So yeah, so
you're filtering ruining things,probably is because we've got
(26:01):
this plant disease going on,it's not covering. So you can
see down there usually that theplants would basically eat all
this up very quickly, theseplants here don't seem
effective, they look prettygood. One of the things that you
see, obviously in captivity isthat mothers are more tolerant
than normal, they would be inthe wild. Yeah. And so that's
(26:22):
last year is pup is stillassociating with the mother. So
when that mother gives birththis year, that can be a
problem, because you might getcompetition for the nipples. And
that then sometimes what youhave to do is separate last
year's pap off, just while theyoung neonate is sort of getting
(26:42):
a foothold as it were at all ofthe sort of feed areas, because
they will have some little bitconflicts around the feed sites
is so soft. So if you're gonnaimagine the edge of that, that
wing in areas you want it to besoft, you don't want any so the
(27:02):
whole of this building paddedpillows down the middle,
everything soft. And that wasespecially important when we
were we introduced the bats intothis area because they couldn't
fly well at all. So we had tocreate a soft environment. And
Steve Roe (27:21):
that's why you're saying you've chosen some of
these larger leaf plants. So ifthere's a crash land and they've
got some soft land, and
Dominic Wormell (27:27):
then you know when the plants are in better
health than they will be laterin the year. We all try to scan
through your cupboard the wholefall. It's just a cushions like
those steps, they're sort oftires, soft tires in the
cupboard with astroturf. Yeah, Imean, it looks a lot better than
(27:47):
that. It looks terrible at themoment love these plants. So
we're just coming up to this isa group of mainly younger bats.
So these will be some pups overthe last last year in the year
before. So they're all you cantell. They're not territorial,
yet. They sort of hang outtogether and there's a Mother's
Day with a pup as well. Look howbeautiful their wing membranes.
(28:11):
The few of those little whitedots are where they've had
scraps before and it's thethumbnail. Some of the older
territorial males like that onewe saw over there they'll have
real peppered wings. This femaleshe can smell the banana. So if
you've got a bit of an honour wemight be lucky she might show
thatthe mums get quite some because
(28:36):
we give them a little bit ofextra banana we give the mums a
little bit of extra banana justto help this one here see the
pop up on the on the window.
(28:57):
This I think this is a nightmareso she's a good mother and they
get used to you know keep comingforward and giving them the
banana just takes that edge overhaving to frantically come
compete if they're not gettingenough she's she's she's a
(29:19):
dominant female so she was She'sno problem why as you'll get
say, like this. This guy here isThat's enough. And there's one
here called kadogo who's reallyquite strong. This one here.
He's got to keep an eye on makesure we get to know
Steve Roe (29:43):
we've got several puts together they're all
clearly made and and given birththe same time a year even in a
capitalist environment then,
Dominic Wormell (29:50):
yeah, it's different. At first it didn't
have any sort of seasonality,but we do see that. It's mainly
it starts sort of early Well midApril, May is the main pumping
month and someday we'll go righton to August in the wild. I
think it's mainly August you'llsee so you sort of when you go
(30:13):
into the wet season of fruitWeber's is higher for when
they're lactating. Becauseinitially, you know that their
resources here are pretty muchthe same all year round. They
appear to lose that seasonalitybut now they definitely appear
to be getting it back. So again,you've got two pups here we've
(30:35):
got a pop up there. And there'sa pup ship female showing us a
pup there next to the heap thenwe got over here that that
female with her pups, she'llcome over
(31:05):
with the with the pups, as withall bats, I suppose that the
little pup will just cling onlatched on to the nipples under
the arm. It's about three, threeand a half weeks, and then they
start to leave them at theirsite after feed, but up until
that point, most of the timethey will will carry them
(31:32):
one of the things that people docommenting on is the smell.
Unfortunately, they focus onthat more than the bats there's
no there's no denying that letgo. The problem is sometimes
you'll get a lot of themwell that's the youngster
(32:00):
they're probably near a wildWait, I would say is another
female here with a pop comingunder
Steve Roe (32:22):
and you were saying they have different areas. So
you've got groups that that saythey tend to stay in those
little groups
Dominic Wormell (32:29):
tend to Yeah, you'll say that females will
stay. There'll be several areaswhere they sort of congregate
with their parents. So if youlook behind you now you're
getting a lot of that showinginterest. Like I said, they got
this incredible sense of smellbut when you see people looking
at them now they're notscreaming. The other thing was
(32:54):
that the reason I got into thisis the mind weaves into nature
conservation. He was he was thefirst Warden on the island Ramin
and we used to go ask the guysare the kid wanting to do
something, I never thought Iwould work fruit bats or
tamarind because I came here onsummer school, and then I'll
(33:14):
apply for jobs, see whathappens. I've done a sort of
zoology degree and all the restof it. And then I wanted to go
to the rainforests. So came outto our work here and now went
out to Bolivia after a year tolook for little primates out
there. Now been in 34 years, soyou get trapped because you?
(33:36):
Yeah, the stories and the issuesthat you have you you have to
stay with them. Until someexperience.
Steve Roe (33:45):
That's great.
Dominic, thank you very much.
Dominic Wormell (33:46):
Cheers. Thank you. My pleasure.
Steve Roe (33:51):
A massive thanks to Dan for having me along for the
day. We've put a link in theshow notes to the Livingston's
page on the Jersey website. Haveyou enjoyed this instalment of
series five? If so, please tellthe world about Bat Chat on your
social media channels. And we'llbe back in two weeks time where
we'll be walking with bats. Seeyou then
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.