Last updated at 22:20 22 November 2007

Wrapped up in their tiny blankets, the bundles of woe pictured below are surviving on the milk of human kindness.

The orphaned baby fruit bats are being raised at a rescue centre after a plague of poisonous ticks swept through their colony.

Used to snuggling up to their mothers, they need to be kept warm and are fed through teats with a sugary liquid full of nutrients.

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Normally adults carry their baby on their back but as those which have been infected slowly die, the youngsters, with no mother to feed them, also perish.

"We walk around the bat colony in the Bush every day and you can hear the young bats crying for their mothers," said Jenny Maclean, who runs the rescue centre on the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland.