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<\/a><\/p>\nA hospital volunteer carries bats that were recently microchipped into a flight cage for flight practice, where they\u2019ll live before they\u2019re released back into the wild. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n
A view of the large enclosure home to flying foxes that have severe injuries and cannot fly. They\u2019ll spend their lives at the hospital. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n Tolga Bat Hospital cares for as many as 1,000 bats a year, the bulk of which are spectacled flying foxes, an endangered species and one of four distinct kinds of flying foxes in mainland Australia. They come in with disease, heat stress, or injuries from barbed wire. The hospital also cares for hundreds of baby spectacleds \u2014 named for the lighter fur around their eyes that makes it look like they\u2019re wearing glasses \u2014 that have lost their mothers and can\u2019t survive on their own.<\/p>\n On a warm afternoon in December, I visited the hospital with Australian photographer Harriet Spark. We met a lot of cute bats \u2014 and they were hard not to love. Flying foxes are furry with expressive eyes, large ears, and a dog-like snout. But it was the hospital founder and director, Jenny Mclean, whom I found even more endearing.<\/p>\n \u201cYou meet a bat, and they\u2019re worth caring about,\u201d Mclean, 71, told me that afternoon, as she fed a sick adult bat fruit juice from a syringe. \u201cThey have serious threats that they\u2019re facing, all of them human-induced.\u201d<\/p>\n Jenny Mclean, Tolga Bat Hospital founder and director, holds an endangered spectacled flying fox. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n Mclean, who works around the clock at the hospital and doesn\u2019t pay herself, said she feels a responsibility to help these creatures \u2014 not only because they\u2019re suffering at our expense but because they help keep our planet healthy. Flying foxes are exceptionally good at pollinating plants and dispersing their seeds<\/a>, Mclean said.<\/p>\n Giving back to these animals in some way, she said, is the least we can do.<\/p>\n Why Australia\u2019s flying foxes need a hospital<\/p>\n The nursery is a small, two-story building with a verandah that looks out onto the lush grounds of the hospital. Most of the babies were outside when we visited, hanging with their feet on several mesh metal shelves. Spectacled flying foxes are enormous: These animals were about 2 months old and already football-sized. By the time they grow up, their wingspan could reach more than three feet.<\/p>\n Volunteer Mia Mathur stares at an orphan spectacled flying fox at the nursery at Tolga Bat Hospital. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n The hospital buys used stuffed animals for the bats to cling to. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n At the hospital it\u2019s not unusual to see people walking around with flying foxes clinging to them. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n The bats, still too young to fly, hung upside down, wrapped in their own wings, alongside stuffed animals. The stuffies, which Mclean buys from a local secondhand store, are meant to mimic mother bats, and the babies will often cling to them for comfort, Mclean told me. Some of the bats were drinking from bottles of flying fox formula attached to the shelves.<\/p>\n Even younger bats were in a room inside the building. Infants under one week are kept in an incubator because they have trouble regulating their body temperature. Slightly older babies are kept in plastic boxes with heating pads and socks that they can cling to. For feeding, \u201cbox babies\u201d are swaddled in cloth around a small rectangular pillow so their wings are contained \u2014 forming baby bat burritos. A few had silicon pacifiers in their mouths.<\/p>\n Some of the orphans suckle on pacifiers, which makes the animals easier to handle. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n An infant flying fox wrapped and waiting to be fed. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n Mathur, the volunteer, feeds a young bat with a syringe of store-bought flying fox infant formula. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n When the orphans are a bit older, they drink from milk bottles on their own. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n Nearly all of these orphans lost their moms to Australian paralysis ticks: parasites that carry a potent neurotoxin in their saliva. When paralysis ticks bite bats and other animals without natural immunity, such as pet cats and dogs<\/a>, the insects can, as their name suggests, cause paralysis and, eventually, heart failure.<\/p>\n During tick season, which typically runs from October to December, hospital workers search the ground below colonies, or \u201ccamps,\u201d for infected bats, which often fall out of trees. If the infection is mild, workers treat the animal with an anti-toxin at the hospital. The babies, meanwhile, are often spared from paralysis. Mothers likely pick up ticks while they\u2019re foraging without their young, Mclean said, and the parasites latch on before they have a chance to crawl onto the babies. That leads to an abundance of orphans in need of care.<\/p>\n Paralysis ticks live all across eastern Australia<\/a>, but they only seem to affect spectacled flying foxes in the Atherton Tablelands, where the hospital is located, Mclean told me. The reason is still a mystery. One explanation, Mclean said, is that spectacleds in this region feed on the berries<\/a> of an invasive shrub called wild tobacco, where they encounter the ticks. While the plant grows in other parts of Australia where both ticks and flying foxes are found, Mclean said, the moist climate of the Tablelands may make ticks more likely to venture out of the grass and into the branches of the invasive shrub. That\u2019s where the flying foxes feed.<\/p>\n Tolga Bat Hospital is in a lush part of Queensland and flanked by forest. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n Orphan spectacled flying foxes hang from a wire frame outside the nursery. Harriet Spark for Vox<\/p>\n That afternoon, I followed Mclean into the main hospital building, where she treats adult bats with paralysis. Rows of small metal cages and cloth boxes sat on shelves along the wall. In some of the enclosures, large flying foxes hung calmly from the top, whereas in others, the animals \u2014 still facing the effects of paralysis \u2014 were lying down.<\/p>\n Using a towel, Mclean gently grabbed one of the bats from its cage to see if it would eat. The animal was having trouble swallowing, Mclean told me, as she placed a syringe with apple and mango juice in its mouth. The bat took a few sips and then pulled its head away. Mclean moved it into a small plastic bin for plan B: seeing if the animal would eat a small piece of pear instead. The bat began to chew, but then spat it out. \u201cYou have not got a good swallow, my girl,\u201d Mclean said.<\/p>\n Tick paralysis is just one of the threats to Australia\u2019s flying foxes, many of which are getting worse. Little reds, another species, get tangled in barbed wire, causing tears in their wings. Spectacleds in the Tablelands, meanwhile, are increasingly born with cleft palate syndrome<\/a> (for reasons that are not yet clear), which makes it hard for them to feed. And more recently, severe heat waves tied to climate change<\/a> have decimated flying fox populations. In 2018, unrelenting heat killed about 23,000 spectacled flying foxes in Far North Queensland, nearly a third<\/a> of the entire population. Mclean says she received about 500 orphans that year from the heat wave alone.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, these animals lack support \u2014 they\u2019re \u201cmaligned,\u201d Mclean said \u2014 especially compared to koalas and other furry animals in Australia. \u201cThere are not that many people who will champion them,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n