Multispecies cohabitation and socio-ecological caring skills: the grey-headed flying-foxes in Melbourne, Australia

Davita Coronel (2025). Social & Cultural Geography, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2025.2469902

Anthropocentric societies are faced with the challenge of improving relationships with more-than-human others amid ecological impoverishment. Care has emerged as an important factor for enhancing multispecies cohabitation. Recent scholarship has interrogated the qualities and transformative potential of more-than-human care, including the extent of human control. This study provides a cultural analysis of more-than-human care, focusing the argument on care for the grey-headed flying-foxesin Melbourne, Australia. Settler-colonialism impacts relationships with the flying-foxes,who are listed as threatened with extinction. This study considers differences between Western and Indigenous orientations to the living world, along with caring skills informed by feminist and Indigenous care ethics. In the analysis, two forms of bat care are compared – wildlife rescue and planting activities– to interrogate the conditions for care and the caring skills they foster. The research builds on interviews with scientists, volunteer bat carers, and an Elder of the Wurundjeri community, and participant observation with bat carers. The findings suggest that planting activities are one context in which socio-ecological caring skills, specifically human responsiveness to more-than-human others, can be practised to enhance multispecies cohabitation. These findings can support education efforts to improve multispecies cohabitation with flying-foxesin Australia, and more-than-humans elsewhere.