Baby Bats in Bubble Baths: Inside Australia's Only Flying Fox Hospital

Picture this: a baby bat, no bigger than a football, getting a gentle bubble bath while clinging to a stuffed animal. It sounds like something from a children's book, but it's actually Tuesday afternoon at Tolga Bat Hospital in Far North Queensland, Australia—one of the only facilities of its kind on Earth.

A Hospital Unlike Any Other

Jenny Mclean, 71, has been running this unique sanctuary for over 30 years with just one full-time employee and a team of volunteers. The hospital treats up to 1,000 bats annually, most of them spectacled flying foxes—an endangered species named for the lighter fur around their eyes that makes them look like they're wearing glasses.

The facility resembles a cross between a veterinary clinic and a nursery. Small buildings house treatment rooms, fruit storage, and an infant ward, while outdoor wire enclosures serve as long-term care facilities for bats that can no longer fly. The nursery, where orphaned babies hang from mesh shelves alongside stuffed animals meant to mimic their mothers, is where the magic—and heartbreak—happens.

These aren't your average bats. Spectacled flying foxes are massive creatures with wingspans that can exceed three feet. Even at two months old, they're already football-sized, with furry bodies, expressive eyes, and dog-like snouts that make them surprisingly endearing.

The Tick Crisis

But behind the adorable bubble baths lies a darker story. Nearly all the orphans at Tolga lost their mothers to Australian paralysis ticks—parasites carrying a potent neurotoxin that causes paralysis and eventual heart failure. During tick season (October to December), hospital workers scour the ground beneath bat colonies for infected animals that have fallen from trees.

The mystery deepens when you consider geography. Paralysis ticks exist across eastern Australia, but they only seem to affect spectacled flying foxes in the Atherton Tablelands where the hospital is located. Mclean's theory? The bats feed on berries from an invasive shrub called wild tobacco, where they encounter ticks. The region's moist climate may encourage ticks to venture from grass into the shrub's branches—creating a deadly intersection.

"You meet a bat, and they're worth caring about," Mclean told me as she fed apple and mango juice to a paralyzed adult through a syringe. "They have serious threats that they're facing, all of them human-induced."

Climate Change Strikes Back

Tick paralysis is just one threat in a growing list. Little red flying foxes get tangled in barbed wire, tearing their wings. Spectacleds increasingly suffer from cleft palate syndrome for unknown reasons. But perhaps most devastating are the heat waves linked to climate change.

In 2018, extreme temperatures killed approximately 23,000 spectacled flying foxes in Far North Queensland—nearly one-third of the entire population. Mclean received about 500 orphans that year from heat stress alone, overwhelming the hospital's capacity.

The Pollination Connection

What makes this crisis particularly troubling is what we stand to lose. Flying foxes are exceptional pollinators and seed dispersers, playing crucial roles in maintaining Australia's forests. Unlike smaller animals, they can travel vast distances, carrying pollen and seeds between isolated plant populations.

"You can't have a healthy person unless you've got healthy wildlife and a healthy environment," Mclean explained. If flying foxes disappear, entire ecosystems could collapse—yet they remain "maligned" compared to more popular animals like koalas.

The irony is stark. While bats can carry diseases like Australian bat lyssavirus (a rabies relative), human infections are extraordinarily rare. Tolga sees about 1,000 sick bats annually but encounters a lyssavirus case only once every three years. Meanwhile, humans pose the primary threat to bat populations through habitat destruction, climate change, and introduced species.