Adorable baby bats - honestly - snuggled in wool at animal shelter

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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Saviour: Helen Darbelly, a helper at the rescue centre, making sure her little bundles are kept warm and fed

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.

Orphans: Baby bats whose colony has been destroyed by poisonous ticks are being raised in a sanctuary. The teats used to feed them are top right