The major appeal of fruit bats over other bats in zoos is how much easier they are to feed. It's not just that the insect-eating bats eat... well... insects. A lot of animals in zoos eat insects, and we do a perfectly good job of keeping them. The problem with bats is that they eat insects on the wing, swooping after mosquitoes and moths, catching them in flight using echolocation. That's a much harder job that feeding an anteater, in which the natural feeding behavior - stick your tongue here and start lapping - is just redirected from a termite mound to a bowl.
Fruit bats are obviously easier. Just skewer some banana and apple on a kebab or leave a slice of melon hanging from the ceiling. The bats will feed in a very similar manner to how they would in the wild.
Okay, but what about vampire bats then? Do the keepers take turns lying down for naps in that exhibit, leaving their toes tantalizingly exposed? Unlikely.
Instead, the bats are given animal blood, such as beef, collected from slaughterhouses and presented in petri dishes. Contrary to what their name might suggest, vampire bats don't suck blood - they lap it up, keeping it from coagulating with chemicals in their saliva and the rapid movements of their tongues. Blood, in case you were wondering, can be stored for about 6 months before it goes bad - not that vampire bats give it a chance to. They are enthusiastic eaters, both in the wild and in the zoo, scarfing down so much of the red stuff that sometimes, they get too full to even fly away.
Blood for Bats - Feeding the Vampire Bats at the Philadelphia Zoo
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