How to Use fruit bat in a Sentence

fruit bat

noun
  • African fruit bats are the reservoir hosts of the virus, the CDC said.
    Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY, 22 Mar. 2023
  • That’s what brought Rodrigues fruit bats to the Safari Park.
    John Wilkens, sandiegouniontribune.com, 17 Sep. 2017
  • The list includes birds, mussels, a fruit bat, a fish, and a flower.
    Sara Tabin, Forbes, 4 Oct. 2021
  • The greater short-nosed fruit bat can be found in the tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia.
    Discover Magazine, 20 Oct. 2015
  • Things can get pretty loud ​ in Egyptian fruit bat colonies.
    Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 3 Nov. 2017
  • But Rodrigues fruit bats are small, about 14 inches long as adults.
    John Wilkens, sandiegouniontribune.com, 17 Sep. 2017
  • Richard Dolbeer was once the man to call if millions of blackbirds or fruit bats were ravaging your fields.
    Brendan I. Koerner, Wired, 24 Jan. 2020
  • The Indian flying fox, one of more than 1,100 species of bats, is also known as the giant fruit bat.
    Discover Magazine, 15 Sep. 2014
  • It was already known that the reptiles hang from the ceiling at the cave entrance and catch Jamaican fruit bats that roost inside.
    National Geographic, 3 June 2017
  • People have also been told to avoid abandoned wells, as fruit bats eat dates from palm trees, and sometimes nest in wells.
    Travis Fedschun, Fox News, 28 May 2018
  • During the 2018 Nipah outbreak, fruit bats from the same area tested positive for the virus.
    Reuters, NBC News, 14 Sep. 2023
  • The researchers captured Egyptian fruit bat mothers and pups from a cave just outside Tel Aviv.
    New York Times, 4 Dec. 2021
  • The tour begins with the butterflies, migrates to fruit bats and from there to see exotic birds and their trainers.
    Bradley J. Fikes, sandiegouniontribune.com, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Samoan fruit bats are native to the National Park of American Samoa.
    Allen Kim, CNN, 12 Jan. 2020
  • Outbreaks of Marburg are thought to be sparked when the virus jumps to humans from animals, likely fruit bats.
    Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 15 Feb. 2023
  • Back in 2011, elephants enjoyed their Halloween treats, as did the fruit bats, who munched on the pumpkins while hanging upside down.
    Benjamin Vanhoose, PEOPLE.com, 31 Oct. 2019
  • But no direct test had ever been performed in a highly social setting, such as in a fruit bat colony.
    Jake Buehler, Quanta Magazine, 31 Oct. 2023
  • It was first identified in pigs in Malaysia and Singapore in the late 1980s, though its natural reservoir is fruit bats.
    Byerin Prater, Fortune Well, 10 Nov. 2023
  • It was first identified in pigs in Malaysia and Singapore in the late 1980s, though its natural reservoir is fruit bats.
    Erin Prater, Fortune Well, 12 Jan. 2024
  • In 1967 scientists became ill after working with African green monkey tissue; the African fruit bat is the host.
    Alberto Lucas LÓpez, National Geographic, 17 June 2021
  • With previous outbreaks, fruit bats have been identified as the hosts of the Marburg virus, from which the virus is then transmitted to people.
    Katia Hetter, CNN, 29 Mar. 2023
  • The virus is spread to humans who have direct contact with animals that are infected, like fruit bats or pigs.
    Alexandra Sifferlin, Time, 22 May 2018
  • The virus, rarely detected in humans, is endemic among the African region’s jumbo-sized fruit bats.
    David Willman and Joby Warrick, Anchorage Daily News, 11 Apr. 2023
  • The hunters were looking for roosting bats, mainly fruit bats and flying foxes—for them, a lucrative prize that can be shipped to villages in the north as part of the bushmeat trade.
    Jim Morrison, Smithsonian, 25 Jan. 2018
  • In fact, a recent study of bat ear bones suggests that fruit bats never had the ability to echolocate, which would be a vote in favor of the flight-first theory.
    Jason Bittel, Smithsonian, 23 Mar. 2017
  • The animal host of Ebola is widely believed to be the fruit bat, although scientists haven’t been able to confirm this.
    Julia Belluz, Vox, 11 May 2018
  • As early as 2005, Nature published a piece suggesting fruit bats could act as reservoirs for the deadly virus.
    Merlin Tuttle, Slate Magazine, 9 May 2017
  • The Marburg virus, which originates in fruit bats, was first detected in 1967 among people who had been exposed to African green monkeys.
    Aria Bendix, NBC News, 14 Feb. 2023
  • Raman located six roosting sites for these fruit bats within a 1-km radius in Kozhikode.
    WIRED, 22 Sep. 2023
  • Some of the exhibition’s most stunning wildlife paintings feature fruit bats, likely rendered by an artist in the circle of Bhawani Das.
    Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian, 4 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fruit bat.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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