{"id":5742,"date":"2025-09-06T09:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/5742\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T09:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:49:07","slug":"20-year-old-lab-bat-turns-into-an-excited-puppy-during-her-daily-massages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/5742\/","title":{"rendered":"20-Year-Old Lab Bat Turns Into An Excited Puppy During Her Daily Massages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raisin is a Jamaican fruit bat who has defied the odds her entire life. Beginning her life as a pup in a lab, she\u2019s now an elderly resident at Bat World Sanctuary<\/a>, living out her retirement to the fullest.<\/p>\n

Bat World Sanctuary<\/p>\n

Back in 2005, a research facility turned Raisin and several other bats over to the sanctuary. Though it\u2019s unclear what they\u2019d been through, sanctuary staff welcomed the former lab bats with open arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are always grateful when labs reach out to us to retire their bats so we can continue to give them a good home to live out the rest of their lives,” Amanda Lollar, president of Bat World Sanctuary, told The Dodo.<\/p>\n

In the years since, Raisin has blossomed into a social fruit bat full of personality.<\/p>\n

Bat World Sanctuary<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a little bit of a senior citizen at this point, but that certainly doesn’t slow her down at all,\u201d Natalie Perez, vice president of Bat World Sanctuary, told The Dodo. \u201cShe gets very excited for both treat time and for sleep time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raisin lives alongside other geriatric Jamaican fruit bats in an enclosure designed specifically for them. She can\u2019t fly anymore, so food, water and enrichment toys are placed where she can easily reach them without flapping her wings.<\/p>\n

Bat World Sanctuary<\/p>\n

At about 20 years old, Raisin is a shining example of what quality care and a nurturing environment can do for animals. In the wild, Jamaican fruit bats typically live for about a decade<\/a>, though Lollar believes those numbers are likely outdated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had several species outlive what literature says,\u201d Lollar said. \u201cFree-tail bats are reported to live 10 to 12 years in the wild, but we have had one that lived to 15 and another to 18.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some labs, bats don\u2019t fare as well. Lack of quality nutrition, social interaction and stressful environments take a toll over time.<\/p>\n

Raisin, on the other hand, receives jojoba oil massages to keep her skin comfortable since she\u2019s lost her fur with age. Regular vet checkups and arthritis medication make crawling easier. When she needs a rest, there are cozy hammocks in her enclosure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to let our bats just be bats,\u201d Perez said. \u201cWe don’t really take our bats out and handle them \u2026 Raisin is a little bit of the exception to that because she is very social.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bat World Sanctuary<\/p>\n

If baby Raisin knew that one day she\u2019d be two decades old, eating fresh papaya and bananas and snuggling with fellow fruit bats, she might not believe it. Thanks to her dedicated caregivers, this is her reality. <\/p>\n

\u201cBats are living beings,” Bat World Sanctuary wrote on Facebook<\/a>. “They deserve compassion, not cages.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Driver<\/a>Driver Pops Car Hood And Finds More Babies Inside Than She Thought Possible”I can’t believe we found them all.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raisin is a Jamaican fruit bat who has defied the odds her entire life. Beginning her life as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[7430,1178,7431,111,139,69,7429,147,7432,1177,1175,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-5742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-bat","9":"tag-daily-dodo","10":"tag-lab-animals","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-sarah-ashley","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-senior-animal","17":"tag-standard","18":"tag-the-dodo","19":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}