Nearly surrounded by Malaysia and Indonesia, the city-state of Singapore now appears like a large city, but it was not always so. About half a century ago, a small boy took a walk in a “forested area” that is probably now part of the city of Singapore. He saw two flying creatures that he later recognized as pterosaurs, very unlike the common fruit bats.
I was wandering some distance from the village; I was staying in Alexandra Road area, and was out on an adventure hunt one hot afternoon in a forested area when I came across a pair of them flying together [as they circled the palm trees] . . . at that time I thought nothing more of them . . . at such a young age, at that time, I never knew they were thought to be extinct.
“They were very much bigger than flying foxes and they did not glide like these smaller creatures. I have seen flying foxes many times at my location before.”
Credibility for pterosaurs living in and around Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia comes not from this sighting in the Singapore area. It comes from many reports of apparent pterosaurs . . .
A strange point of this sighting is what those two pterosaurs were eating: the orange fruit from palm trees. Those flying creatures may have been only distantly related to the ropen of Papua New Guinea, which is reported to eat what it catches on reefs and what carrion it finds on Umboi Island and probably on other islands.
In other parts of the world where nocturnal pterosaurs or apparent pterosaurs have been seen to fly, the creatures seem to be catching bats. One news report in Europe seems indirectly related but intriguing: bats catching birds at night.
“Giant Bats” Catch Flying Birds at Night
Only a few years ago, scientists discovered that a large European bat eats birds that it catches at night, snatching songbirds in flight. I found it interesting for two reasons: Few Europeans have ever encountered these bats and something other than an apparent pterosaur catches flying creatures at night (if we call songbirds “flying creatures”).
Researchers have now found evidence of a giant European bat that is plucking migrating birds out of the night sky. . . . This bat [the giant noctule bat: Nyctalus lasiopterus] is hairy and brown, with a wingspan slightly bigger than a blue jay’s. It is one of Europe’s largest bats and it has a huge mouth full of scary-looking teeth. It is one of the least-known bats in all of Europe — it spends its days hiding out at the tops of tall trees.
Popa-Lisseanu is an expert on giant noctules, and says it has long been known that these bats feed on flying insects. What wasn’t known until recently is that the giant noctule may be the only bat that eats birds on the wing.