[3] Habitat loss has driven it to endangered status, and it is listed as threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Their ears are rounded and their eyes large, giving them the features of a canid, so many megabats are called flying foxes.

Paul Alan Cox from the Hawaiian National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kalaheo, and Oliver Sacks from Albert Einstein College in New York, found the bats consumed large quantities of cycad seeds, and - like some eagles, which were shown to build up levels of the pesticide DDT in fat tissue - probably accumulate the toxins to dangerous levels.

[11] Johnson and Wiles described roosting behavior: "Sarigan's population differs from those of larger islands in the archipelago by usually having smaller roost sizes, typically 3–75 bats, and large numbers of solitary bats that at times comprise up to half of the population.

Colonies and smaller aggregations were composed primarily of harems with multiple females, whereas a nearly equal sex ratio occurred among solitary animals.