African Straw-colored Fruit Bat

Open encyclopedia reference

The straw-coloured fruit bat (Eidolon helvum) is a large fruit bat that is the most widely distributed of all the African megabats. It is quite common throughout its area ranging from the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, across forest and savanna zones of sub-Saharan Africa. It is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List due to a decreasing population trend. Straw-coloured fruit bats travel in massive colonies of at least 100,000 bats and sometimes massing up to 1 million. From October to end of December every year, in the largest migration of mammals on the planet, up to 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats congregate in Kasanka National Park, Zambia, roosting in a 2 hectares (4.9 acres) area of Mushitu forest each day. This migration was only discovered in 1980. Their necks and backs are a yellowish-brown colour, while their undersides are tawny olive or brownish.

Wikipedia contributors, Straw-coloured fruit bat; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T13:02:04.112424+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Eidolon helvum (Kerr, 1792)

Name authority

(Kerr, 1792)

Common name

African Straw-colored Fruit Bat

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Chiroptera

Family

Pteropodidae

Genus

Eidolon

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classMammalia Linnaeus, 1758
9. subclassTheria Parker & Haswell, 1897
10. infraclassEutheria Gill, 1872
11. orderChiroptera Blumenbach, 1779
12. suborderYinpterochiroptera Springer, Teeling, Madsen, Stanhope & Jong, 2001
13. familyPteropodidae Gray, 1821
14. subfamilyEidolinae Almeida, Giannini & Simmons, 2016
15. genusEidolon Rafinesque, 1815
16. speciesEidolon helvum (Kerr, 1792)

Close classified relatives

These entries share the source’s genus, Eidolon. They are not necessarily the closest relatives established by molecular evidence.

Browse 158 records assigned to Pteropodidae.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=631569 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:38VDD. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.