Ok, just a bit of advice. If you're listening to a comedy/science podcast, don't let your mind wander too much. No Such Thing As A Fish is one of my favorite podcasts (I'll tell you more about that later), and I got distracted for a moment, then came back to the sentence 'the hammer-head bat looks like a moose'. I was pretty sure I heard that wrong, so I took it back 30 seconds, then I heard it again, so I looked it up.
Yeah, that checks out. Wow. No wonder it's known as a flying moose. The picture is from the Live Science link below.
Before you start thinking that you'll be meeting these bats some dark night, they're only in Africa. They're the largest bats in continental Africa, but they aren't the largest bats overall--those are a different group known as flying foxes that are seriously giant, with a 5 foot wingspan, and they range from Madagascar to Australia (yet another thing there that wants to kill me?). Both the flying foxes and the moose above eat fruit though, mostly figs apparently, so there's nothing to worry about there either.
Other than their strange heads, one thing I feel I need to tell you about them is that, sometimes, when a group of males meet up and want a girlie, they'll find a group of trees and settle into their own roost, then they'll honk to try to make themselves more attractive to mates, and the girls get to just peruse the options. Kinda like window-shopping.
If you want to know more or see more pictures, please investigate the sources below. They're kinda fun and I think people will enjoy seeing more pictures of them.
Sources:
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