Bat Enjoys Tasty Snack After Being Rescued From Barbed Wire

An eastern tube-nosed bat is recovering at an Australian sanctuary after getting caught on barbed wire, footage shared on May 16 shows.

Video posted online by Queenslander Denise Wade, who has been caring for injured baby bats for more than a decade, shows the injured tube-nosed bat – the first she has ever cared for – enjoying some custard apples.

“Following weeks of rain, food resources are waning and our bats are starting to take risks just to keep themselves fed,” Wade explained in the YouTube caption.

She added that after a “marathon effort”, the 58-gram adult female was rescued from barbed wire in a flooded suburb in outer Brisbane.

“Whilst we would all give our eye teeth not to have her in care, the reality is that so many wildlife species are caught on barbed wire,” she wrote.

According to Wade, as the bat is an adult female “she is probably pregnant” and they hope to release her back to the wild “well before she gives birth”.

Attending to the injured bats at her home in Rochedale South, she regularly shares updates on the animals to her Batzilla the Bat YouTube and Facebook pages. Credit: Batzilla the Bat via Storyful

Video transcript

- We have a very special visitor today, and in 15 years I've been caring for bats, this is the first one I've had in care. And Bec, who's holding this little tubie, who doesn't have a name yet-- she's an eastern tube-nosed bat. She's not a micro bat, she's a flying fox. What was her story, Bec?

- She was, unfortunately, stuck on some barbed wire fencing.

- You want some more, darling?

- And the people who own the home had only just bought it, so they hadn't had a chance to remove the fencing yet, but I believe they've already taken care of it. They had covered her up for us with a towel to reduce her stress and just keep her as calm as possible while we tried to get there, because it is very wet weather here at the moment. So we required a pick-up from the person who had called her in to come and get us and take us to her.

And when we got there, we thought we were attending a flying fox of normal Brisbane species, so probably a black or a gray. And Mel was with me, and she pulled the towel back and we discovered it was not what we were expecting at all.

- Nobody expected this, did we. We were all a bit, well, just overwhelmed, really. It's just such a privilege to have such an incredibly exquisite animal in care.

- Yes. She's gorgeous.

- She's got some damage, but we're confident that she'll be able to go home. And she will go home. She'll be released back to the place that she came from. And she was in a guava tree, wasn't she, Bec?

- Yeah. She was near a guava. I think they said pineapple guava, but either way, it's those little guavas, not the big ones.

- I think it was a cherry, but it's irrelevant anyway.

- Yeah. It was just heavy with fruit. Really heavy. And the barbed wire passed through the middle of it, so it was a bit of a trap.

- Well, she won't touch guava. Because the people gave us some guavas and I've tried guava today. She won't touch it. Let's give her a little bit of support here.

- Bec's got her gloves on.

- There you go.

- And anyway, Bec's very kindly brought over some custard apples. And this is the first time she's shown any interest in eating fruit, so she's been on a semi-liquid diet up until this point. So I just want to say a huge shout-out to the people who found her, who are taking the barbed wire down. To Bec and Mel for having a very exciting--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

[LAUGHTER]

--and especially for giving me the privilege of raising-- well, not raising, but caring for this incredible little animal.

She's-- we've got a bit to learn about you, but I've got a very good mentor in far North Queensland who has-- two, actually-- have been very helpful. So we'll get on with that custard apple and I'll see how we go. And the other thing is, she's an adult girl, so she's probably pregnant. So we've got to really look after her carefully, and we will. And we'll have a name soon.