A large-eyed fruit bat that feeds on very ripe fruit.
Its back ranges from dark brown to gray, with paler fur on the underside.
At Tsitsikama Coastal National Park in South Africa, researchers watched Egyptian rousettes at a cave roost in winter 1974 and the summers of 1975 and 1976. In winter, the bats left an average of 86 minutes after sunset and returned 216 minutes before sunrise. In summer they left 31 minutes after sunset and returned 12 minutes before sunrise, so activity lasted longer despite shorter nights. Winter departures ranged from 54 to 166 minutes after sunset, with returns 126 to 320 minutes before sunrise.
On winter nights when moonlight reached the gorge, the bats tended to leave later. Eleven observation sessions included 434 bats that were caught, measured, marked and released. The authors discussed breeding season and temperature alongside moonlight as possible influences on seasonal rhythm.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
A 1978 paper recorded that the cave in Tsitsikama Coastal National Park had been undisturbed for at least ten years by the study period. Before the park was proclaimed in 1964, local farmers collected guano for fertilizer and periodically smoked bats out of the cave. The current formal global conservation category and assessment date were not identified in the reviewed sources.