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Tube-Nosed Bat Injured on Barbed Wire Fence Enjoys Tasty Smoothie at Queensland Sanctuary

An adorable tube-nosed bat is recovering at a Queensland bat sanctuary after she got trapped in a barbed wire fence, recently shared video shows.

The footage was posted online by Denise Wade, who has been caring for injured baby bats for more than a decade, and shows little Talia feeding by syringe.

Wade said that the 46-gram critter was a juvenile who was injured after she found herself tangled on a barbed wire fence. She said that Eastern tube-nosed bats were prone to such struggles.

“Although her wounds are a work in progress we are hopeful that she can be returned to the wild,” Wade said.

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

- Well, look at this. Who would have thought? We have another Eastern tube nosed bat in, and this one came in from North of us. And the same old problem. Barbed wire fence. So this is Talia, and she's-- from what I can tell, she's a juvenile. And she has sustained some rather nasty damage from the barbed wire. Apparently that's a fate that befalls lots of Eastern tube nosed bats.

So she comes in at 46 grams. You can see the tubes. And the tubes twitch independently of each other. And it's about the same time last year that Tallulah came in. She was a bit bigger than Talia. And she was eventually released back to the wild after three months in care. This one has some different issues that need careful management, so we'll be keeping our fingers crossed for her. But she'll be in for quite some time.

It's another reason to get rid of barbed wire fences. Yum yum. Fortunately, she really loves smoothie. And she'll eat bananas. We did manage to get some custard apples for her. Want some more, darling? Oh, yes please. So we'll start on fruit tonight. She's settled in for the first night with us, and she's been in care for about five weeks with another carer.

So we just got to get you settled and let nature do its thing and hopefully heal her. We don't know how many tube nurses there are down the Eastern seaboard. I don't think there's ever been any counts done, but there's so much development going on. This is why we don't generally see the cheeks coming. We don't generally see them. Tallulah was my first one in 16 years.

And she came from an area that isn't developed, which is nice that there are some areas that they can still live in in peace. Then we'll get on with breakfast and get you cleaned up, madam.