Adelaide's Botanic Park is home to 32,000 bats, but for the next four days they will be sharing their home with tens of thousands of festival-goers.
World music festival WOMADelaide, which opens at the park today, has taken special measures to protect the grey-headed flying foxes as well as educate those heading to the event.
Enter: the Bat Tent.
Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide's School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Wayne Boardman, will run the Bat Tent at the festival for a third year.
He said the tent was the place to learn "everything you wanted to know about flying foxes but were too afraid to ask".
The grey-headed flying fox is the only type of bat that is endemic to Australia, which makes those roosting in Botanic Park that much more precious.
"They've become a nationally significant camp because they're a threatened species," Dr Boardman said.
"We get a lot of people from overseas tourists come down to see the flying foxes. It's one the of the best places in Australia to see them."
The Bat Tent begins
The idea for the Bat Tent stemmed from Dr Boardman's own enjoyment of the festival.
"There was a couple of occasions I was walking around WOMAD ... I was listening to people talking about flying foxes, and they were saying 'they use sonar', and I was thinking that there's such a lack of information, so let's try and fill that in," he said.
In addition to educating the public, Dr Boardman and his team also use the opportunity to observe the flying foxes and how the festival may affect them.
"So, we're also observing what they are doing in this period, trying to get some data to see if they are, from a scientifically validated perspective, truly affected by the music and the preparation [of WOMAD]," he said.
"We had 1,400 visitors the first year, then 1,800 last year, so we think this year is going to be busy."
Are the bats bothered by WOMAD?
Dr Boardman said unlike microbats, flying foxes do not use echolocation for navigation and hunting.
"[Flying foxes] just use smell and sight," he said.
"They've got this particularly long nose for good smell, and they've got these big eyes — they find the best way around the landscape without having to use echolocation."
Dr Boardman said it was therefore possible that the flying foxes living in Botanic Park were unaffected by the sounds of WOMAD, but they will await the outcome of their studies.
"It seems like the very loud metallic noises tend to scare them the most," he said.
"So, if you've got other types, it seems it's not too bad."
Green Adelaide ecologist Jason van Weenen said the Botanic Park's bats were incredibly tolerant.
"They can get used to things fairly quickly," he said.
"Even music festivals, where you've got the music on, they might be initially disturbed by a particular noise, but then you can see them basically trying to have a snooze, and stretching.
"And all these sorts of activities that show they are not stressed or trying to get away from the camp."
The grey-headed flying fox arrived in Adelaide in 2010, setting up a colony in the park lands.
They originally lived along the eastern seaboard, relocating to South Australia due to food and habitat shortages.
Mr van Weenen said their arrival had helped the South Australian environment.
"They feed on blossoms and do a lot of pollination," he said.
"They also do some reasonably long-distance seed dispersal.
"Those sorts of things are considered really valuable ecosystem functions."
Keeping a safe distance
Experts urge festival-goers to keep their distance from the bats and not touch them.
"Like all wildlife, they are generally fine but if you went to pick one up, they would be terrified and they would try to protect themselves," Mr van Weenen said.
"So they would try to bite and get away."
According to SA Health, any contact with bats requires immediate medical attention as they can carry a rabies-type infection that can spread through a bite, scratch or exposure to their saliva.
Dr Boardman said while it was unlikely for a bat to "come down" close to anyone at WOMAD, the best way to stay safe was to stay away from them.
"The risks are very low but the consequences are dire … so we do everything we possibly [can] to help people avoid touching a bat," he said.
