Onyc

The Onychonycteris (OH-nick-oh-NICK-teh-riss), also known as the Bat or Onyc, is a species of Mammal in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Bats usually fly around in caves and become aggressive when players get too close. Their pathing is currently very poor, but be careful around corners - they may attack you from the side! Due to their protocooperation with the insects inhabiting caves they can turn aggressive towards players even if they have attacked a nearby Araneomorphus or Pulmonoscorpius. When close they will slowly fly to you to attack, when hit they will fly faster and will be harder to hit. Their bite has a 10% chance of inflicting Mega Rabies.

Appearance
Bats, unlike birds, keep themselves aloft by use of long fingers which are connected with a wing membrane. Bats are good and enduring flyers, but they cannot move around in any other way. Unable to sit, bats must cling to a cave niche and remain hanging upside down to relax or to sleep. Bats are lightweight, with short and mostly brown to gray fur. They have arrowheadlike incisors, which help to part small prey animals.

Taming
The Onyc is tamed non-violently, rather than through the use of tranquilizers, and requires a player level of 65 to feed. Since it is a naturally aggressive creature, you must first apply to yourself in order to keep it from attacking you on sight. The Bat will not be tameable if it is trying to attack another creature or is feeding on a corpse, so you must remove any such distractions from the area, or lure the Bat to a more secluded area. Once you have the repellent applied and distractions dealt with, place the food you wish to feed it in the right-most slot of your hotbar. Then, carefully approach the Bat until the button prompt to feed it appears - it will eat the piece of food you give it and a taming bar will appear. You must then wait until it becomes hungry enough to be fed again, and repeat the process. If you accidentally get too close and touch the Bat, it will become aggressive and attack, despite the repellant. In order to continue taming it, you must get far enough away for it to lose interest in you. A Ghillie Suit can be used as a substitute for repellant, but you will need to be prone to get close enough to tame it, leaving you vulnerable to attacks.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Onyc.

General
Onyc's appear in caves in huge numbers and can shred even flak armor with ease. Wearing hide armor is quite recommended so you can repair your armor on the fly while still providing protection.

Strategy
In the close-quarters of the cave you will likely only get 1-2 shots off before the Onyc is on top of you so you will rely heavily on melee to kill them. Concentrate fire with allies and evade melee as much as possible. It should be noted that their damage rapidly compounds massive armor damage and the faster you can kill them the better.

Weaponry
Close-range weapons are necessary. A shotgun is expensive but guarantees victory against all but the largest swarms. A pike can prove capable of piercing many Onycs at once, and a shotgun will obliterate them once they are close.

Dangers
If you are caught by large numbers of bats without armor they will make short work of you. They also synergize extraordinarily well with other cave creatures that specialize in locking you down with tranquilizing venom and web attacks. Becoming immobilized by other creatures in the cave will render you susceptible to the Onyc's armor-rending attacks. Keep your armor repaired, and bring materials to repair it on-site if possible (remember you can skin Onycs, Sarcos, and Titanoboas for necessary hide but typically cannot gather fiber where bats are found).

In Patch v261.0 Onycs gained a 10% chance to inflict on hit. This makes getting hit much more dangerous to unprepared survivors. Consider bringing Lesser Antidote when exploring areas that Onyc are in.

Weakness
Don't be afraid to retreat and hit-and-run large clumps to death as the Onyc is surprisingly bad at chasing. Bringing mounts is extremely effective as even a lowly Dimorphodon can prove a necessary distraction to deal lethal damage or, in numbers, fight the bats easily on their own.

Roles

 * Armor Destroyer: Even in late-game fights that are usually won by Rexs and Spinos, the Onyc's unique ability to devastate armor makes it remarkably dangerous to players. (Level up Damage and Health)
 * Guard: Capable of protecting your home from raiders by simple virtue of devouring them and their armor the second they come in contact with the enemy. (Level Damage and Health)
 * Hunter: Intermixed with Dimorphodon it can devastate enemies when deployed offensively in large swarms versus players. (Level up Damage and Health)
 * Usurper: The ability to ruin a player's armor easily is a skill that, employed correctly, can allow a low level player who has obtained one to tactically use this power to eliminate a higher-level player. A nighttime ambush on an oblivious survivor can result in the higher-level player losing their armor while the player works to kill them. This method can be made simpler by utilizing an Arthropleura, which also quickly destroys an enemy's armor.
 * Damage: It's attack has 35 base damage, which is at the same level of medium carnivores such as Carno and Sarco.
 * Swarmers: A swarm of tamed bats can dismember opponent survivors in a mere seconds by shredding their armor first, and deals considerable damage to them at the same time.
 * Aerial Attack:
 * Combatant:

Collectibles

 * No information available.

Efficiency

 * No information available.

Notes/Trivia

 * When using the whistle command for landing fliers on the Onyc, they appear to do a back flip, putting their feet up to grab. Because of this, it seems possible that they will be able to "land" and hang from ceilings in a future update.
 * As of March 2020, nearly 5 whole years since the game launched in early access, the inability for the Onyc to land has still not been addressed and most likely never will be by the devs, as the Onyc is a creature of lower importance/priority to most players and developers of the game.
 * 3-5 Onychonycteris can easily shred through even the best armor, so it is advised not to wear valuable armor when exploring caves, as they are usually everywhere and in high quantities.
 * The Onyc can spread to a survivor even when mounted, as they can also focus attacks on the rider like that of the  and.
 * The fact they can spread Mega Rabies is a reference to how the Vampire bats (Desmodontinae) use their saliva to prevent wounds from clotting up so they can eat at their leisure for roughly 30 minutes.
 * The generic name Onychonycteris means "clawed bat" in Greek. The species name specuncola appears to be an improper combination of Latin specus "cave" and -cola "dweller" (thus "cave dweller"), possibly via confusing/conflating specus with spelunca (from Greek σπῆλυγξ spêlunx), which also means "cave"; the correct form would be either specicola or speluncicola.
 * The bat in game is much larger than a real Onychonycteris, which actually wasn't very big with only around a 50 cm wingspan.
 * Real life Onychonycteris were incapable of the echolocation of modern bats.
 * Since the release of Aberration, the Onyc icon has been improperly replaced by the icon. This was fixed in 316.18.
 * As the Onyc cannot land or swim, they cannot be cloned using the and cannot be teleported using the  unless a  is used to grab and "ground" the Onyc.
 * Cannot leave the northeast cave on The Island if tamed there unless a is used.
 * If one looks closely at the wings of an Onyc, a flaw in the model can be spotted as there are 2 big holes in the membrane of the wing that are opened and shut with every wing beat.
 * This has since been fixed as of December 2019, though it is unknown which patch it came in.
 * According to Helena's notes, Onycs have been seen eating mushrooms and moss growing in the caves. However, in the game survivors can't gather the mushrooms or moss that grow in the caves.
 * Real bats are social animals that live in colonies however Ark's Onyc doesn't have this behavior that real bats have. Rather, they merely congregate in large groups, usually for the reason of preying upon unlucky survivors.
 * Despite the dossier stating they're fearful of, they show no signs of fear in game and in fact will typically be found near them.
 * This was probably an originally planned mechanic that would make the Titanoboa the main predator of the Onyc, though this has never been seen to come to fruition and probably for good reason, as both creatures would kill each other constantly and inevitably would attack other creatures by accident, instead of attacking the player. This would make caving WAY easier, as all one has to do is pit the Titanoboa and Onyc (and most likely other creatures would get involved) against each other and wait for the battle to end and pick off the survivors.
 * Prior to 316.19, Onyc gender was unrecognizable, only seen as a white name as opposed to pink or blue names representing the gender. They could not be bred because of this.
 * The Onyc is incapable of moving on the ground. All known bats in real life, however, are capable of crawling.