Life of ‘Batman’ in balance after feral cat attack
‘‘Batman’’ survived a cat attack, but its life is hanging by the wings.
The 10-gram adult pekapeka (long-tailed New Zealand native bat) was found in Te Awamutu, bloodied after an attack by a feral cat.
Batman, whose sex has not yet been determined, was taken to Hamilton Zoo on July 31, a little hypoglycaemic and traumatised.
The nocturnal mammal is currently calling a thirty-degree incubator home and has been given the name Batman.
Zoo veterinarian Tori Turner first heard about the bat’s plight the day it arrived, through a phone call from a friend in Te Awamutu. The friend had found the bat the night before, sleeping on a wall with blood all over its back.
Batman had since improved health-wise, but Turner was yet to see any wing healing – essential for its release into the natural habitat.
Turner said at the rear of the right wing, where the tendon was supposed to be attached, it had completely come off in the attack.
‘‘We have had a chat with some specialists in Australia, and they said the wings can slowly stick back together but, this one, I am not sure if it’s viable.
‘‘DOC (Department of Conversation) has suggested that if it can’t be released, we’ll have to euthanise it.’’
Zoo director Dr Baird Fleming only hoped it did not come to that, after time and effort to give the bat ‘‘the best chance of survival’’.
‘‘We have facilities to pretty much take care of anything here
. . . but unfortunately it would be a DOC decision and not ours.’’
Communication and marketing lead at Hamilton Zoo Megan Wetere said the zoo wanted to avoid euthanising Batman if they could.
Discussions with DOC were ongoing and it was difficult to give a timeframe.
In the meantime, Batman was the only bat at the zoo.
Its diet included up to two crickets, six meal worms and two wax moths each day.
On top of that, it also received a 0.5ml of Wombaroo insectivore mix (ground up worms) and approximately 1.5ml of fluids per day.
‘‘It is also not eating by itself, just because it is stressed in the foreign environment.
‘‘Bats, if not kept warm enough or given enough glucose, could easily enter a torpor state. They pretty much shut down.’’
The attack on Batman was highlighted recently, when a research paper by DOC science adviser Dr Kerry Borkin was published in the NZ Journal of Zoology.
It confirms the long-held suspicion that cats – both feral and domesticated – are regularly hunting and eating the country’s native bats or pekapeka.
Borkin said it was difficult to estimate the number of bats residing in the Waikato region, but knew the population was likely to decline at the rate of five to nine per cent a year without effective predator control.
‘‘They have basically become more at risk in recent years of going extinct.’’
Borkin suggested cat owners to take the conservation friendly cat quiz on the DOC website to determine how conservation friendly their cats were.
‘‘Bats, if not kept warm enough or given enough glucose, could easily enter a torpor state. They pretty much shut down.’’ Communication and marketing lead at Hamilton Zoo Megan Wetere