This bat inhabits forest and savannas and is found at elevations of up to 2,000 meters. It is a very social bat and prefers to roost in tall trees by day but has also seen found in lofts and in caves. During daytime it is often noisy and restless and even flies about from place to place. At night groups fly out of the roosts in search of ripe fruit. The large roosts are seldom closer than 60 km to one another. The roosts the bats use are within easy reach of forests or fruit plantations. Juice of various fruits are the preferred food, though this bat also feeds on the blossoms and perhaps young shoots of the silk-cotton tree.

The bats will eat directly into the fruit of palm trees, and has the unusual habit of chewing into the soft wood, probably to get moisture. The straw-colored fruit bats occur in enormous colonies of 100,00 to 1,000,000 individuals of both sexes. Female bats have one young per year, and a newborn can weigh 50 grams. The known longevity record for straw-colored fruit bats is 21 years and 10 months.

In some areas these bats are hunted and eaten by humans, but in other areas they are protected. Many farmers in Africa think of the bats as a threat to the introduced pine plantations, because the bats gnaw the bark. However, these bats do not cause very much harm to the trees and should not be harmed.