MAMMALS 19 



often at a considerable distance from the last feeding- 

 place, and they look like bunches of some grotesque 

 fruit. In Java these bats are such a pest that most of 

 the cultivated fruit is plucked before it is properly ripe 

 in order to save it from their attacks. They bite very 

 fiercely, but though they have a disagreeable odour the 

 flesh is white and quite palatable. The lesser Fruit-Bats 

 of the genus Cynopterus are also common, and are even 

 more voracious than Pteropus ; a single bat will think 

 nothing of devouring far more than its own weight 

 in bananas in one night. 



The external parasites of bats are very remarkable, 

 and quite unlike those which infest other mammals. 

 Fleas are rarely, if ever, found on bats, but their place 

 is taken by those strange apterous flies, the Nycteribiidce 

 and the Streblidce. The pupae of some fly, not belong- 

 ing to either of these families, have been found 

 embedded in the wing membranes of a species of 

 Hipposiderus, one of the Indo-Malayan insectivorous 

 genera. But most remarkable of all is the strange 

 earwig Arixenia esau which lives in the brood-pouches 

 of a large Bornean bat, Cheiromeles torquahis. 



The bat itself is a peculiar-looking creature, almost 

 entirely devoid of hair and with thick, leathery wings, 

 the membrane of which is attached in such a way to 

 the sides of the body, upper arm, and thigh, that a big 

 pouch is formed under the armpits extending to the 

 back of the shoulders and sides of the chest. In these 

 pouches, which are present in both sexes, the young 

 are carried, and in the female the teats are situated 

 here, close to the armpits. It has been suggested that 

 when the female gives birth to twins, one of the off- 

 spring is carried about by the father, but I do not think 



