. Ecology
1A. Behaviour
Have you seen their large eyes?
The lesser dog-faced fruit bat usually cluster in small groups and forage with their keen sense of smell and sight. Unlike Microchiroptera bats, Megachiroptera bats are not capable of laryngeal echolocation as such a mechanism is too energetically expensive to retain. So, the lesser dog-faced fruit bat has its distinctive large eyes for smooth navigation at night.
In addition, the combination of sound and sight is required for the navigation of the lesser dog-face fruit bat. In a study (Heffner et al. 2008), it was shown that hearing is used to direct eyes to source of sound for sound localization.