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comment by rob05c
rob05c  ·  3199 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski I need some cute-spam and I think I'm not the only one





OftenBen  ·  3198 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've long pondered the feasibility of owning a flying fox.

Anybody ever had a pet bat?

rob05c  ·  3198 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Noooo. Bats are feral, like most wild animals. They will never be comfortable around a human like their own kind. They're social animals, which means a lone pet will be depressed and miserable. They have a range of 50–100 kilometres. Which means keeping one in even a large enclosure is like locking a human in a small bathroom. Their entire life.

Domestication is genetic. Keeping almost any animal which hasn't been genetically domesticated is a bad idea. And even domesticated animals have ranges and activity requirements. It breaks my heart when I see someone keeping a high-activity dog (size and activity don't always correlate) in a small apartment or locked in a crate.

Learned Helplessness is a horrific thing.

OftenBen  ·  3198 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The more you knooooow.

thenewgreen  ·  3198 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's so odd to me how much bat talk is happening. I've recently taken to sitting on our deck at night with my kids and watching the bats circle above us. They love it. When the sun starts going down my son will run to the window point outside and start saying "bats, more bats please." -I should state that my son is 2 years old. It might be less cute if he were, you know 16.

I wrote this last night about it.

Tiger_the_Lion  ·  3198 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's great that he's so interested. My dad and I used to camp on a corner of my grandfather's land, and we'd quite often see bats flitting around after dark.