Hi guys, it's M today, I'm here with my buddy, Kashmir, or just Kashi for short

He is an Indian fruit bat. He's not a pet bat. He doesn't live here at home

That wouldn't be fair at all he actually belongs to the place

I used to work at I've just brought him home so that I can do a video with him

You will see me interacting with him in the video

It's quite cute, but please don't think that it's okay to do this with any bat

I don't endorse bats as pets although. He is insanely cute

Please if you find a bat wherever you are in the world don't pick it up rabies is very serious

And it is very prevalent in a lot of countries where a lot of you are watching so if you find a bat

Please leave it alone contact your local wildlife

Rehabilitator if you're in the United States or in the UK we do have a bat trust as well another note I'd like to add

Is that Kashmir was not taken from the wild he was born in captivity in England and comes from a long line of captive bats

Also, please remember to subscribe to my channel if you haven't already

It's a fun place to be I bring you lots of weekly creature features

And I'm gonna start inserting a couple of other things in there as well you having a quick clean

Okay, you have a little clean take it. I'm not gonna hold it for you

Okay, I'll hold it. I also just quickly want to shout out to the Birch, Please! Studio

Especially to Fran who creates these amazing necklaces, and I just love this one it says

"Swallows are so cliche" as the name Indian fruit that would suggest Kashmir comes from India

He would live in a really really large colony they can be

Hundreds strong and speaking of strong the other strong thing apart from the numbers is their odor it's not your fault

But you do smell horrendous

So they are indeed a very

Smelly creature in fact a lot of people when they go traveling and they, they come across

Colonies the first thing you'll notice is the smell, and the sound often you don't even see them until you've smelt them and, and heard

Them because they are so loud although Indian fruit bats are listed as a nocturnal species meaning they wake up at night

They're not strictly nocturnal Indian fruit bats along

Australian fruit bats will periodically take opportunities to graze on fruit in the daytime as well as to bask in the Sun

They will relax so much in the Sun that often you can see fruit bats

Dangling from the trees with one foot whilst their wings hang down in total rest now

I put out an Instagram post a couple of months ago where I showed Kashmir hanging upside down in my hand and I had this

Backlash I had to remove the picture because everyone was going, "Why are you forcing him to live upside down?"

Why why, would you do that?

Well, they actually always live upside-down you'll never find a bat

The right way up walking around Indian fruit bats have to feet with permanently hooked toenails and a pair of wings

Many people expect to see these little hands and fingers somewhere on the bat's wing a bit like a sugar glider

But actually the bat's wing is the bat's hand

Indian fruit bat's wings are just like our own

Fingered hands with skin stretched across them. their thumb is actually a hook seen here

Which they used to move themselves around the trees and to hook onto branches to pull through it towards them?

I haven't trained Kashmir to be upside down. He's just always upside down

He will eat upside-down, he sleeps upside down

He breeds upside down, and females will actually give birth upside down. When the females give birth

They usually give birth to just one baby fruit bat

And they actually have to catch the baby inside their wings so imagine that upside down they start to give birth

They have to lick the infant in order to stimulate it to breathe and they have to catch it in their wing and hope that

The baby holds on to them so that the baby doesn't fall off as the name also suggests

They are also frugivorous meaning that they are predominantly fruit-eating bats, although. They are frugivorous

They do have these really sharp

Pointy teeth and those are used to grip onto fruits because fruits are often a round or a spherical shape and they don't have hands

In order to be able to sort of hold an opposable thumbs to manipulate and be able to bite

Effectively so they do have to have quite sharp teeth in order to grip that food

And then what they'll do is they'll actually place it inside their wing and cradle that food whilst eating it upside down

It's quite remarkable

They really love the watery juicy fruits out there for example grapes

And what they'll do they will start by turning the grape in their mouth

Chewing at the same time whilst turning with those really pointy teeth and then they use their tongue

Which is a triangular shape and quite long and and very ridgy as well

They'll use that to press the food up to the top of their roof of their mouth

Where they've got these bony ridges and they will scrape. So they basically go like this. They go

*Chewing Sounds*

So they just suck up all the

Juicy bits swallow that and then spit out any of the skin and some of the larger seeds as well

Kashmir and the other Indian fruit bats take the prize for the most adorable chamming or chewing sounds in the world they

Definitely enjoy their food get ready to either fall in love or be severely repulsed

*Bat Eating Sound*

Now bats are really important if it weren't for bats there wouldn't be that many

Rainforests because bats eat so much fruit that when they eat those seeds they carry them miles and miles away

And then they deposit the seeds off in their droppings in their guano Indian fruit bats are luckily not endangered

They're listed as of Least Concern which means that there are

bountiful numbers of fruit bats in the wild however in the United States

There's a horrible disease called white-nose which is starting to affect lots of populations of bats

It's quite an epidemic and a lot of those bats with white nose

Do die can you let go of my arm, please there? We go. Thank you. Tell me a secret

I wish you guys could feel

How it feels to have a bat sniffing your ear when they smell it actually vibrates really far deep inside your ear it almost feels

Like there's a moth like right there just buzzing around yes, hello

Laughter

You're too cute Kashi, I hope my lighting hasn't changed too much

I took the opportunity to go and get a little drinky drink of water

Because it's good to stay hydrated, would you like to stay hydrated? Let me know oh you would. Yep I'm just gonna

Guess that's his now *Laugh*

As a bat living in a colony can be really dangerous because there is quite a straight hierarchy

You've always got the really big impressive males

And they get first choice of which females to breed with if you're a low ranking male or female you get bullied

really really badly

They're really aggressive to each other and if they sense any weakness in the group they try and stamp that out

So if you are an outcast bat, or you're a low-ranking bat

You actually sometimes have to crawl along the floor on your belly in order to get food because you'll get bullied out of the actual

good ripe fruit

Yes, I know. No you're a bit of a bully aren't you Kashmir's a bit of a bully

It's hard to believe but he does bully the other bats a little bit in fact sometimes when bats are bullying each other and having

Squabbles and scraps and they can tear this skin membrane on the side here luckily that skin membrane is very fast

Healing so sometimes you can see bats and when they extend their wing you can see that that wing is

actually

Torn that will regenerate itself in most cases of course where these bats live there's lots of water around as well lots of lakes

Lots of rivers and often they will fall into the water by accident, however. They can swim, fairly well

It doesn't look particularly graceful

It looks like the butterfly

But they can paddle themselves back to shore now Kashmir's uncle was one of the oldest living bats in Britain

He was about 41 years old when he passed away and his name was Eric

Unfortunately the place I used to work at don't have any official documents to prove it

But they are a very very long-lived animal in captivity you may have also heard of that term as blind as a bat

Kashmir is certainly not blind and many bat species aren't blind and there are so many

Different species in fact a quarter of all the mammals in the world are bat species so that is a lot of different bat species

Kashmir's eyesight is decent

He's got a great nose, but his best sense is his sense of hearing those ears are constantly twitching around he can hear everything

Thank you guys so much for watching

I hope that you enjoyed meeting

Kashmir remember to hit that subscribe button down below become part of the creature crew and we'll see you in another creature feature soon Bye

*Kissy sounds*

He's pulling away, I'm getting denied here. Ha stole it. someone's at my door

*Door sounds*

Psst! Don't forget to subscribe