Sports drink sips save Shirley's short-tailed bat

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 14, Issue 676, 4 March 1997, Page 1

Sports drink sips save Shirley's short-tailed bat

The electrolyte sports drink Powerade is proving to be a lifesaver for a young

forlom short-tailed bat nicknamed Pluto. Department of Conser-

vation researcher Shirley McQueen found the baby short-tailed bat about three

weeks ago in a beech forest near Ohakune. "I found Pluto on the forest floor at the bottom of the nursery roost tree. He must have fallen from his roost and was too young to fly back up. I've been feeding him on Powerade and the insides of meal worms and he's starting to get bigger. He's also taken a liking to pears." "It's difficult to estimate his age but I think he's a runtbecauseotherjuveniles I've caught recently are practically fully grown and are already flying about. He' s only just started growing soft velvety fur on his back and tummy and his wings aren't ready for fly-

ing yet, although he's attempting to fly and stretching his wings. He'd be only a little bigger than half the size of an adult bat — about eight grams." Ms McQueen has become Pluto' s foster mum. He goes everywhere with her, climbing up and down her sleeves. She leaves him in his box during the daytime as bats are nocturnal creatures. She tried offering Pluto different kinds of milk, includingkittens' formulaand special Australian powdered milk designed for bats, but he didn't like any of them. However, she found out by accident he Tuni to Page 2

Pluto the bat sips on sports drink

FROM PAGE 1 likes cider when he drank a drop of it off her fingertip one night so is going to offer him apple juice next. He loves drinking running tap water crawling down Ms McQueen's arms when she's washing her hands. In the wild, bats eat insects, berry fruit, pollen and nectar and Pluto ate a mountain totara fruit Ms McQueen fed him. Unlike most bat species, the short-tailed bat has adapted to ground hunting, using its folded wirigs as front legs to scramble around on the forest floor and has stronger hind legs than most bats.

Ms McQueen says having Pluto around is a great opportunity to get more insights into how bats develop. She only knows of one bat that was bred in captivity in New Zealand, and that died after a couple of months. She's not sure of Pluto's future. He may be released back into the wild when he is older and stronger but not this winter as he would be unlikely to survive. Little is known on New Zealand' s native bats, the country's only endemic land mammals. DoC scientist Brian Lloyd and Ms McQueen are studying the endangered lesser short tailed bat in the area Pluto was found.