Introducing Regular Expressions

Colophon

The animal on the cover of Introducing Regular Expressions is a fruit bat.

Members of the suborder Megachiroptera and family Pteropodidae are known as fruit bats, flying foxes, old world fruit bats, or megabats. Despite the latter nickname, members of the Pteropodidae family vary greatly in size—the smallest measure six centimeters, while others weigh in at two pounds, with wingspans up to approximately five feet long.

True to their name, fruit bats are frugivorous, or nectavorious, meaning they eat fruit or lick nectar from flowers. Some use their teeth to bite through fruit skin and actually eat the fruit, while others lick juices from crushed fruit. Because many of them dine on flower nectar, fruit bats are excellent pollinators and seed-spreaders—in fact, the World Bat Sanctuary estimates that approximately 95% of all new rainforest growth can be attributed to fruit bats’ distribution of seeds. This relationship between the bats and plants is a form of mutualism—the way organisms of different species interact biologically for a mutual fitness benefit—known as chiropterophily.

Fruit bats can be found all over the world, though they prefer warm, tropical climates, due in part to the availability of fruit and flowers. While they’re excellent flyers, fruit bats are known for their clumsy landings; they often crash land into trees or try to grab limbs with their feet in order to stop themselves. This perpetuates the misconception that they’re blind, when in fact, fruit bats ...