What do bats taste like?

When we first moved to Papua New Guinea, one of the hardest things I struggled to eat was bat meat!  I have too many misconceptions of those pesty little varmints being filled with dreaded deceases.   These bats that the locals eat are no ordinary bat.   When you hear the locals refer to a ” Flying Fox” they are actually referring to these large fruit bats..  As you can see by the pictures…they are much larger then the average bat that we are familiar with.

If you were to pull into the port city of Madang, on the eastern coast of PNG…you would literally see hundreds of them up in each tree like I took in this photo.  It is quite normal to see kids trying to hit one down out of the trees with their slingshots.

The largest bats have a wing span of up to 5 feet!

On one occasion,  while we were dining out…our security gaurds started  shooting multiple rounds into the trees in hopes that he would hit a few.  This caused mayhem in the restaurant as people ran out from everywhere to try to catch some of the injured prey.   It was quite the site and left us wondering exactly WHAT we were having for dinner…was it really chicken?

Watch the video here to find out what the locals think bat meat tastes like!

Did you know that CATS taste good

Well that is what a majority of the the locals think.   I don’t care to find out.  Cats are one of the ideal pets of choice in PNG.   When they are young they eat a lot of pesty rats…because of such “fine dining”   it is said that cats make great tasting meals when they get older.   Cats raised by Americans are said to be especially tasty because they get all this special cat food…at least that is the word on the street. The locals  appear to help themselves to our fat cats quite a bit.   They think it is a shame to have a fat cat and not eat it!  How about you?   If you were invited for lunch and they served you cat stew…would you eat it?