Green Options

Around 22,000 “large flying foxes” — the largest fruit bat in the world — are legally killed every year in Peninsular Malaysia by hunters. At this rate, scientists say the bat could go extinct in the near future.

A new species of Samoan fruit bat or ‘flying fox’ was discovered at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia by Kristofer M. Helgen, a Research Zoologist and Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Helgen, the lead author of the paper published in American Museum Novitates, noticed the bat within one hour of being on the premises of the Academy of Sciences. (There are about 17 million biological specimens housed at the Academy.)