World's Weirdest: Flying Foxes
Meet the little red flying fox, a bat with a wingspan of up to three feet. Its wings take a lot of work to maintain - and one missed approach while getting a drink can land this bat in the mouth of a crocodile.
Transcript
In Australia, little red flying foxes spend their whole lives among the trees.
So a good pair of wings is pretty important.
Except that these aren't really wings-they're more like hands. Three foot wide alien hands with webbed fingers, that is.
In the air, the flexible digits act like fingers, spreading the thin membrane between them to control direction and altitude.
All that maneuverability will come in handy for this fly-by.
One way the big bats can drink water is to skim the surface of a river, and lick the droplets of water off their fur.
But one missed approach, and plenty of predators lurk beneath the surface.
So the foxes have to keep those wings working like a well-oiled machine.
A good licking keeps those hands primed for flight.
Since flying foxes never stay in one spot for long, each bat has to be locked and loaded.
They just have to keep their hands out of the water.
