The nocturnal exhibit at the Lake Superior Zoo is home to 12 Egyptian fruit bats and two African straw-colored fruit bats. Fruit bats eat fruit, as you probably can guess. This differs from Minnesota bats which are insectivores.

Both kinds echolocate, making them one of the loudest animals at the zoo. Zookeeper Kelli Carroll explains, “They’re one of the most highly social bat species, and they actually have their own dialects, depending on what colonies they’re from. They come up with their own languages because if you live in a colony of a hundred thousand bats it gets really noisy.”