Meet The Biggest Bat In The World, The Golden-Crowned Flying Fox (Video & Pictures)

The giant golden-crowned flying fox gets its species name from the golden fur around the head, in sharp contrast to the black body. Like all other fruit bats, they have no tail. They are among the largest bats, with a wingspan of 1.5–1.7 m (4 ft 10 in–5 ft 7 in) and weighing 0.7–1.2 kg (1.5–2.6 lb). The only other bats with comparable measurements are a few species of Pteropus.

Megabats make up the only family (Pteropodidae) in order Chiroptera that is not capable of laryngeal echolocation. Echolocation and flight evolved early in the lineage of Chiropterans and echolocation was later lost in family Pteropodidae.[5] Both echolocation and flight are energetically expensive processes for bats.[6] The nature of the flight and echolocation mechanism of bats allows for creation of echolocation pulses with minimal energy use. Energetic coupling of these two processes is thought to have allowed for both energetically expensive processes to evolve in bats. It is hypothesized that the loss of echolocation is due to the uncoupling of flight and echolocation in megabats.[8] The larger average body size of megabats compared to echolocating bats[9] suggests that a larger body size disrupts the flight-echolocation coupling and made echolocation too energetically expensive to be conserved in megabats. Watch video here: