Page 7 - Gateways_Spring_2025_flip
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Adopt Your Favorite Animal                  • •  Fruit bats, like the Rodrigues fruit bat, are important to the
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                    of animals in our  Animal Adoption Program.        di s p e r s e  f r ui t  s e e d s  t hr o u g h  t h ei r  f e c e s .
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         When you adopt an animal, your donation helps provide expert        • •  Rodrigues fruit bats were nearly extinct in the 1970s. Most of their
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        2 0 2 3 . H e d e s c e n d e d f r o m b a t s t h a t l i v e d a t B r o o k fi e ld Z o o C h i c a g o i n    Environmental Education Project, has raised the number of
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                                                                  Rodrigues fruit bats to more than 20,000!
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         Social life: A social species, colonies of the bats roost together in trees
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                                                                What Brookfield Zoo Chicago is doing: Brookfield Zoo Chicago
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         i is just after they receive their morning meal. They tend to be very     is one of about 15 Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA)
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         baskets, on skewers, and skewered on tree branches throughout        Our breeding colony successfully produced a pup in 2024.
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         N an d o r ’ s  p e r s o na lit y :   T h e Z o o h a s a c o l o n y o f 1 2 b a t s . H a lf      a a cooperative population management and conservation program
         Nandor’s personality: The Zoo has a colony of 12 bats. Half
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         of them were born here. Nandor is friendly with his animal care     f for select species in AZA‑accredited zoos and aquariums. Each
                                                                plan manages the breeding of a species to maintain a healthy
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         specialists, who describe him as a “ladies’ man” because three of        p l a n m a n a g e s t h e b r e e d i n g o f a s p e c ie s t o m a i n t a i n a h e a l t h y
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         our females like to hang around him. He is also routinely seen visiting
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         with another male who accompanied him to Brookfield Zoo Chicago.  .    a and demographically stable.  .
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         Fun facts
         Fu n  f a c t s                                        What everyone can do: Participate in bat conservation by helping
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         •  R o d r i g u e s f r u it b a t s a r e s o m e t i m e s c a l l e d “ R o d r i g u e s fl y i n g f o x e s ”    to educate friends, family, and communities about the vital roles
         •  Rodrigues fruit bats are sometimes called “Rodrigues flying foxes”
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          because their face has dog‑like features—a long snout, pointed        bats play in ecosystems and by bringing awareness to their declining
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                                                                bats keep populations of mosquitoes and crop‑eating insects down.
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         • •  Bats have wings and fly, but they are not birds. They are the only
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                                                                People can help protect the 13 species of bats that call Illinois home
          mammals capable of true flight, or the ability to power themselves
          m a m m a l s c a p a b l e o f t r u e fl i g h t , o r t h e a b i l it y t o p o w e r t h e m s e lv e s    P e o p l e c a n h e l p p r o t e c t t h e 1 3 s p e c ie s o f b a t s t h a t c a l l I l l i n o i s h o m e
                                                                by staying out of caves where the animals roost to prevent the
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          through the air and not simply glide or parachute.  .    b y s t a y i n g o u t o f c a v e s w h e r e t h e a n i m a l s r o o s t t o p r e v e n t t h e
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                                                                spread of disease like white‑nose syndrome, and by limiting the
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         • •  Fruit‑eating bats don’t use echolocation to find their food as     use of pesticides.  .
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          i insect‑eating bats do. Echolocation is a physiological process used
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          by some animals to locate objects, primarily prey. The sound waves
          b y s o m e a n i m a l s t o l o c a t e o b je c t s, p r i m a r i l y p r e y . T h e s o u n d w a v e s
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          they emit bounce back to them, revealing the location of prey.
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                                                                               BROOKFIELD ZOO CHICAGO | SPRING 2025  7
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