Researchers "Translate" Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot

The Egyptian fruit bat is a highly social mammal that roosts (and argues) in crowded colonies. (Michal Samuni-Blank).



This isn't the end of the research, Yirka reports. Yovel and his team want to investigate whether bats are born knowing this “language” or if they learn it over time while living in their colonies. They also want to know if the bats use similar communication outside the roost. To understand that, they will attach microphones to some bats and release them into the wild.

Kate Jones, professor of ecology and biodiversity at University College, London, tells Davis that the research is very interesting. “It is like a Rosetta stone to getting into [the bats’] social behaviors. I really like the fact that they have managed to decode some of this vocalization and there is much more information in these signals than we thought,” she says. She says that it might even be possible to use similar techniques to begin understanding nuanced communications in other species as well.

Source: Jason Daley / Smithsonian Magazine.