FLICKR, SHELLAC
Bat caves are noisy places, and bats are sociable creatures. But a study published December 22 in Scientific Reports suggests that bats convey nuanced social information through the ruckus of chirps and calls, and that this communication is a learned, rather than innate, skill.
“When you enter a bat cave, you hear a lot of ‘gibberish,’ a cacophony of aggressive bat noise,” lead author Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University said in a press release. “Previous research presumed that most bat communication was based on screaming and shouting. We wanted to know how much information was actually conveyed.”
Yovel and colleagues recorded all of the sounds emitted by a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) in an artificial cave for more than two ...
