Episode 8: Fruit Bats with Carter Kleoppel

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INTRO (00:00)

*Intro Music – you and me the adventure, me and you to the zoo*

EMILY BISHOP: Hello, and welcome to the Sedgwick County ZooCast, where we are inspiring respect and conservation for wildlife and wild places through caring, connecting, and conserving.

I’m your host, Emily Bishop, and today on the ZooCast, we’ll be sitting down with zookeeper Carter Kleoppel to talk about Fruit Bats.

Keep listening to learn what a flying fox is, how zookeepers care for one of the oldest bats in the country, and to test your knowledge on vampires.

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INTERVIEW WITH ZOOKEEPER CARTER KLEOPPEL // LEARN ABOUT FRUIT BATS (00:41)

BISHOP: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the ZooCast.

CARTER KLEOPPEL: Thank you for having me.

BISHOP: Yeah. So if just to get started, you could give an introduction; talk about who you are and what it is you do here in Sedgwick County Zoo.

KLEOPPEL: My name is Carter Kleoppel. I am a zookeeper in the bird department, specifically in the Tropics building and some outlying areas throughout the Zoo.

BISHOP: Yeah. So how did you get started working in Tropics?

KLEOPPEL: So, I actually went to Friends University, which is local to Wichita, and I was in the Zoo Science program. And through that I was introduced to Sedgwick County Zoo, and specifically to the bird department, where I developed a pretty intense interest in birds and decided that that’s where I wanted my career to head. And I had the opportunity to do some volunteer work in the tropics. And then I had a temporary zookeeper position before leaving for a couple years and then coming back full time.

BISHOP: Yeah. So, you didn’t always want to work with birds?

KLEOPPEL: I had always had an interest in birds. I like to think of myself as kind of an equal opportunity animal lover, I can find something interesting about every animal, but the actual hands-on work with birds, really. I really enjoy that part of the… of working with birds. Yeah.

BISHOP: Like you said, Tropics is home to primarily birds and also fish. But it’s also home to our fruit bats.

KLEOPPEL: Yes. So, in addition to taking care of the feathery flying things, I also get to take care of the furry flying things, which are our Indian flying foxes, also known as great Indian fruit bats.

BISHOP: Yeah. Are they the only mammal that lives in the tropics building?

KLEOPPEL: Yes. So, several years ago, we used to have common vampire bats as well in the building. And we still often do get questions about them. But… So as zoos evolve, we’re constantly reevaluating the welfare of the animals. And we decided that the exhibit space just wasn’t adequate for them anymore. So, we found a facility in Texas that was willing to take them from us. And we sent the vampire bats there. So, anybody who often wonders why the cave doesn’t have any vampire bats in it anymore, that’s why. They’re still around. They’re just down in Texas now living it up.

BISHOP: But we still have our fruit bats.

KLEOPPEL: Yes, we do.

BISHOP: Yeah. So, what is a fruit bat?

KLEOPPEL: So, that’s kind of a loaded question. There are many, many different species of fruit eating bats. Generally, when we refer to something as a “fruit bat,” though, we’re referring to a flying fox, which is a certain genus of bats, the genus Pteropus.

They’re bats that are native to Southeast Asia, Australia, some parts of Africa, and Indonesia. And they’re called flying foxes, because when you look at their faces, they have a very long kind of dog or fox-like snout, and they’re often used, shorthand called fruit bats. But there are a lot of small bats in Central and South America. There are bats in Mexico that also fruit eating bats. They’re just not part of that specific genus.

BISHOP: Yeah, so “fruit bat” is kind of like a catch all.

KLEOPPEL: It is.

BISHOP: And we specifically have the Indian flying foxes

KLEOPPEL: Yep. Indian flying fox. As the name suggests, they’re native to the Indian subcontinent. So, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, that part of the world primarily in tropical forests. They’ll also be found in some swamp forest as well. But yeah, that’s what we’ve gotten the Tropics.

BISHOP: Yeah. So, what kind of fruit do they eat?

KLEOPPEL: So, in the wild, they eat a lot of figs. They’ll eat mangoes, bananas, things like that. Here at the Zoo, we try to replicate as much of that as we can. Fruit that’s been cultivated for 1000s of years has different nutrition to it than fruit out in the wild so they don’t get the exact same thing. We’re trying to balance nutritionally what they need. So, on any given day, they get apple, banana, sweet potato, carrot, grapes, lettuce, and kale. And then we also sprinkle a multivitamin powder on top of them that’s formulated specifically for fruit bats.

BISHOP: You mentioned earlier, they’re primarily found in like, the Indian subcontinent. Can you talk a bit more about, like specifically where they’re found? Like, the type of ecosystems they live in?

KLEOPPEL: So, like I said, they’re mostly found in tropical forests, both tropical rainforests and some of the drier, more seasonal forests. And then they’ll be found in swamps as well. And they primarily are found in these habitats just because they have fruiting trees that will fruit year-round for them.

As humankind has kind of encroached on their habitat, they will also be found on plantations a lot in India, which can be something of a problem for people in India because the bats will come and will eat some of their crops, often a lot of their crops because they can live in very large groups. So, they are seen as a pest in some parts of India. But then on the flip side, a lot of people in India consider bats sacred. So, it’s kind of a balancing act in India over do we want to control the bat population or do we want to just let them do their thing.

BISHOP: What niche are they fulfilling within their environment?

KLEOPPEL: So, fruit bats are extremely important as seed dispersers in their habitats. So, bats while they’re eating fruit, first of all, they’re very messy eaters, they don’t really even eat most of the fruit itself, they mostly want the pulp and the juice. So, they’ll bite into a fruit, chew it up, and then just spit the rest of it out on the forest floor. That includes the seeds, which will then germinate on the forest floor and will grow. And then also, if they do ingest seeds, they will then pass that seed through their digestive tract, and it will come out in their feces, sometimes 10-15 miles away. So that’s another way of spreading seeds over long distances. And fruit eating bats around the world serve this purpose. And they’re extremely important for that reason.

BISHOP: Can you talk a bit about fruit bat conservation?

KLEOPPEL: So, Indian flying foxes specifically are considered least- least concern. So, they’re not highly endangered or anything, they have a pretty good population. But as I said, in a lot of parts of the world, fruit eating bats are seen as pests because they will eat crops. There is some concern about roosting areas with bats because there’s- is a risk of disease transmission from bats to humans, it’s usually very low. But because bats have high body temperatures, and they live in very tight groups, if any sort of disease vector is introduced to them, it can pass through that colony very quickly. So that is also a concern. But generally, the risks are far outweighed by the benefits of what bats, and specifically fruit bats since that’s what we’re talking about, due to their environment.

In the United States, we have no fruit eating bats, but we do have a lot of insectivore bats that are eating insects at night. They are literally a boon to our agricultural business here in the United States; the amount of pesticide that doesn’t have to be used because of insect eating bats in this country is… probably millions of dollars are saved because of that. So, it doesn’t really matter what type of bat it is, they all serve an extremely important function to their ecosystem. And it would be much worse to not have them around than to have them around.

BISHOP: On average about how big are the colonies that the bats are living in?

KLEOPPEL: So, they can number from anywhere from like 20 bats to well over 1,000 bats. So very, very large colonies at times. I’ve seen photos of them where it looks like a fruiting tree, but all the fruits are little fuzzy bats when you look closer. It’s pretty cool.

BISHOP: Can you talk about the Indian flying foxes that we have here at SCZ?

KLEOPPEL: So, we have five Indian flying foxes currently. Only four of them are visible in the Tropics. They’re usually- this is another question I get a lot from people in the Tropics, because “where are the fruit bats?” They do have free range of the entire building. But generally, their main roosting spot is a very large Ficus tree. Basically just turn around and look up, they’ll probably be near the very tip top of that tree. It can be kind of hard to see them because it’s pretty thick foliage, but they’re up there. Those four bats are all between 11-13 years of age. They’re all females, and they’ve been living here their entire lives.

We also have one more bat. Her name is Bearded Lady, and she is currently, we’ll call it in retirement. She can’t fly very well anymore. She’s got some joint issues, so she is kept in an enclosure behind our hornbill exhibit. So, she still has contact with the free flight bats, especially at night when they come down to feed. But Bearded Lady has an interesting story. She was actually wild caught in India back in the 1970s. So, if you do that math, she is in her 40s, which… I have loved bats my entire life. I thought I knew a lot about bats. I did not know that bats could live that long. She is between 42 and 45 years of age. She is the oldest female Indian flying fox in the country. And the second oldest Indian flying fox, in general, in the country.

BISHOP: How long on average are Indian flying foxes living?

KLEOPPEL:  I’ve read anywhere from like 10 to 20 years.

BISHOP: Oh, so she’s super, super old.  

KLEOPPEL: She’s definitely considered a geriatric animal. So, we do what we can to keep her comfortable. We… she doesn’t have a lot of teeth left. So, we cut her fruit up very small, and we make sure that she gets softer foods. Because she’s by herself, we try to mimic that colony aspect of her by literally just hanging stuffed animals from the top mesh of her enclosure, which she does like to kind of huddled near those because it gives her kind of that sense of security. And then like I said, she does have mesh contact with the free flight bats, especially at night because their feeding area’s right next to where we keep her, so- and we’ve set up night vision cameras before and we see them interact with each other. We see her moving around and kind of seeking contact with them. So, she still does get that social aspect of being in a colony. She’s just safer not being 50 feet up in a tree where she could fall and hurt herself.

BISHOP: Yeah, do the other four fruit bats have names or just Bearded Lady gets that honor.

KLEOPPEL: Bearded Lady is special she’s got her- her name just because we interact with her so much. The other four we try to be hands off with as much as possible. They live a very natural existence. We catch them a couple times a year maybe just to get an exam done on them to make sure that they’re healthy. And we obviously count them every day. We take binoculars out in the building and we look at them closer to make sure that their body condition looks fine. Nothing stands out to us as being abnormal about them. But we do try to treat them as close to wild bats as we can.

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LEARN ABOUT WILD LIGHTS (12:12)

BISHOP:  We’ll be back in a moment to learn more about fruit bats. But first let’s hear about upcoming events at the Zoo.

Follow the white rabbit to a land of wonder at this year’s Wild Lights

Come face-to-face with One-of-a-kind Asian Lantern Sculptures. Maybe a Cheshire cat will cross your path, or the queen’s guard of playing cards. Be the guest of honor at a tea party hosted by a hatter and a hare.

Wednesday through Sunday, October 11 through December 17 from 6pm to 9pm.

Tickets start at $15 and are available online or in person.

Journey through the looking glass at Wild Lights.

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TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF VAMPIRES // SANGUINARIAN VEGETARIAN (13:02)

BISHOP: So, it’s the Halloween season. And I think naturally this time of year, when people think of bats they also think about vampires.

KLEOPPEL: Of course.

BISHOP: Now, our bats do not drink blood. They eat fruit. They’re vegetarian. But did you know that there are plenty of vampires in pop culture who are also vegetarian? And by that, I mean that like, they don’t drink human blood they drink animal blood or something.

KLEOPPEL: Sure.

BISHOP: So, we will return to talking about the Indian flying foxes more but we’re gonna take a brief break to play a game. And the game is called

*drumroll*

Sanguinarian Vegetarian.

*rim shot*

Cause it’s like a wordplay.

So, the rules of the game are simple. I’m going to give you a description of a quote unquote “vegan vampire” and then you’re gonna tell me their name. And listeners at home can play along as well. There are five vampires so you just have to get three right to win the game.

KLEOPPEL: Still a tall order.

BISHOP: I’ll let you choose. I can either give you the piece of media that the vampire’s from and you have to name them or I can give you the vampire’s name and you have to tell me what they’re from.

KLEOPPEL: Okay. Give me the name. I feel like I’ll be better at thinking about the media.

BISHOP: All right.

Okay, here we go. Question one.

Edward Cullen and his family all have amber eyes because they drink from animals, but if they drank from people, they would have red eyes.

KLEOPPEL: Okay, that’s a gimme. That’s “Twilight.”

BISHOP: Yeah, you got it. See here. Good. One, one down four to go. Okay, question two

Marceline the Vampire Queen from this cartoon doesn’t feed on blood, but rather the color red. And in 2015 she starred in her own miniseries called stakes.

KLEOPPEL: Say that’s “Adventure Time.”

BISHOP: That is “Adventure Time.” So, you just have to get one more right to win the game.

KLEOPPEL: All right.

BISHOP: So, you’ve got it. All right. Question three.

Stefan and his brother Damon vie for the affection of Elena in this CW show. Due to a lack of impulse control when drinking from humans, Stefan only drinks from animals.

KLEOPPEL: I got to in my mind, I’m going to guess “True Blood.”

BISHOP: It’s not “True Blood.”

KLEOPPEL:  My second guess was “Vampire Diaries.”

BISHOP: It is “Vampire Diaries.”

KLEOPPEL: Okay, okay.

BISHOP: I’ll give you that one. That’s, you know, they’re- they came out around the same time, very similar. It counts.

Question four.

Louis goes through bouts of veganism feeding on rats, much to the chagrin of his maker, Lestat. Adapted from Anne Rice’s 1976 novel, The 1994 movie has Brad Pitt playing Louis and in the 2022 TV series, he’s played by Jacob Anderson.

KLEOPPEL: Is that “Interview with a Vampire”

BISHOP: It is “Interview with the Vampire.” See, you’re- you’re winning. You’re like four for four.

KLEOPPEL: I’m honestly surprising myself, because I don’t think I’ve seen any of these so far.

BISHOP: Well, you know, it all hinges on this last question then, I guess.

So, our final question, question five.

Michael Emerson is a vegan vampire on a technicality; he doesn’t drink any human or animal blood. After moving to California with his mom and brother Michael falls in with a group of bad boys who to his surprise are all vampires.

KLEOPPEL: Is this the “Lost Boys?”

BISHOP: It is the “Lost Boys.”

You got it, you’re like five for five. You were worried for nothing.

KLEOPPEL: I’ll be honest, I only know that one because I saw a description about it on my television this weekend. Before that, I thought it was a Peter Pan movie.

BISHOP: See it’s fate. You know, it all works out. You win. You get to be… I don’t know what’s a fun title… you get to be like, King of the Vampires for the day. You know.

KLEOPPEL: It’s an honor.

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LEARN ABOUT ZOO MEMBERSHIP (16:34)

BISHOP: Before Carter and I finish our conversation about fruit bats. Let’s hear about how you can experience more perks when you visit the zoo.

Where can you find lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! At the Sedgwick County Zoo, of course! Feed a giraffe, ride a train, and learn all about your favorite animal.

And Zoo members get to experience even more fun. For as low as $80 per person, you get to experience unlimited visits to the Zoo, early entry, discounts on special events, and early access to the Sedgwick County ZooCast.

Become a member today! Visit scz.org/membership for more information.

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CLOSING THOUGHTS ON FRUIT BATS (17:20)

BISHOP: Wrapping things up, I just have a few more questions.

I was wondering what question do you get asked the most by guests about the Indian flying foxes?

KLEOPPEL: Other than where are they? That’s definitely the high- The biggest question. Let’s see, what do people ask?

A lot of people ask if they’re friendly or nice, and kind of like how I said, they’re the kind of ambivalent towards us unless we get our hands on them. Because we try to treat them as wild bats. Obviously, when any animal is- that is not used to human contact is suddenly in close contact with the human, they do get somewhat defensive. But I would say that we just kind of let them do their thing unless we feel a need to intervene or a want to intervene. And they kind of just enjoy their life out there in the tropics.

BISHOP: Yeah, they’re just on their own. They’re kind of self-sufficient.

KLEOPPEL: Yep, they get to be their own little colony. And they get to do their fruit bat thing out there.

BISHOP: Yeah. So, what is your favorite thing about the fruit bats?

KLEOPPEL: My favorite thing about fruit bats, and about bats in general is that, despite the often… bad representation they get in, especially Western culture, they are extremely important animals. They’re the second most numerous mammal group on Earth after rodents. There are over 1,400 different species of bats on the planet. Every single one of them is providing a service to the ecosystem in which they live. So, to be an animal that has been vilified so much in the media, to actually have such an important role to play. That’s something that I always try to impart on people when I treat them- teach them about bats is, yes, you might think they’re scary or you might not know a lot about them. So, it might make you uncomfortable, but they’re extremely important animals and ones that we really do need to conserve and make sure that we’re keeping their environments clean and letting them do their services towards us because we really do depend on them whether it’s fruit eating and nectar eating bats pollinating plants that we need.

Any people who are listening who are above the age of 21, if you like tequila, you better like bats because there’s a species of bat down in Mexico that is the primary pollinator of agave plants that are used to make tequila, for example. And like I said, the millions upon millions of dollars that we save in pesticide use every year because of insect eating bats. And the amount that rainforest ecosystems depend on animals like flying foxes for seed dispersal. I think, again, the benefits of bats far outweigh any fears or anything that might make you uncomfortable about them.

BISHOP: So, what is your favorite thing about getting to work with them?

KLEOPPEL: I grew up always liking weird animals, and weird little mammals. So bats were always like, up near the top of my list of favorite animals. It- my absolute favorite would always change, obviously, because every day, I would be obsessed with a new animal. But bats were always up there. So just the fact that I get to see them every day and work with them every day is kind of a dream come true. And it’s something that I have to kind of step back and think about a lot.

There are days where I just kind of get into my routine, and I’m just doing my stuff. But then I’ll kind of step back and think for a moment like, this is pretty cool what I get to do for a living, and that I get to teach people about these animals, and I get to work with them, and I get to support conservation efforts. That’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. So being able to actually do it is… it’s very satisfying.

BISHOP: Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, those are all the questions that I have. Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you’d maybe like to speak on or comment?

KLEOPPEL: Um… I kind of got on my soapbox about people not being afraid of bats. So that was- that was my big thing I wanted to say was, love bats because they do a lot for us that we might not even know about.

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OUTRO (21:35)

Thanks for listening to the Sedgwick County ZooCast.

This episode was researched, written, and produced by me- Emily Bishop.

We’d like to give a special thank you to Carter Kleoppel, for sitting down and talking with us about fruit bats

Thank you to the Sedgwick County Zoo’s Marketing and Communication Team

And a special thank you to our Zoo Members, whose support makes this podcast possible. If you’re interested in becoming a Zoo Member, visit scz.org/membership

Be sure to give us a follow so you never miss when we upload new episodes.

Thanks again for listening. Until next time, I’m Emily Bishop and this has been the Sedgwick County ZooCast.