Bats use private and social information during the hunt

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Pallidus antrozous with the scorpion. Credit: Merlin Tuttle

In the arms race between predators and prey, everyone is developing increasingly sophisticated ways of catching or escaping from each other. Rachel Page, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Ximena Bernal, associate professor at Purdue University, review Functional Ecology how bats use both private and social information to attack their prey.

"Bats are an interesting group to study because they have developed many different hunting strategies," said Page. "In this review, we are looking globally at bats from around the world to study the patterns and processes underlying the sensory and cognitive adaptations that bats have evolved to successfully hunt their prey."

Bats hunting in open spaces, above the forest or above water, depend primarily on their echolocation systems. When they receive the echo of a prey, they emit more and more frequent signals, producing what is called a buzz, when they embark on the slaughter. . In contrast, bats that hunt in more congested and congested spaces often can not use echolocation to find their prey. The echoes that bounce off the vegetation are difficult to distinguish from the echoes of the prey. These bats are very good at listening to the sounds of prey.

New Zealand bats, seeking their food up to 40% of the time, seek their movement and use their sense of smell to detect their prey in the leaf litter. The vampire bats are able to recognize the sounds of the breathing pattern of a given individual and return to feed with the same blood night after night. Long-eared desert bats listen to the sounds of scorpions as they move through the environment and use them to locate their prey.

A Trachops cirrhosus with a tungara frog. Credit: Merlin Tuttle

"Searching for prey takes a lot of time and energy, but one of the amazing things that bats do to minimize their research efforts is to spy on prey when They communicate – and also monitor other bats to find out where they catch it, "said Bernal.

While male túngara frogs call, in the hope of attracting a mate, freckled bats perceive calls that mate like a dinner bell. Katydids also call to attract friends. Different species of bats respond to different calls of kydydid, dividing the available food. And like frogs, some moths also form groups of singing males to attract females and end up attracting bats at the same time.

Bats observe other bats as they hunt, paying particular attention to areas where they are heckling, indicating many prey. Bats generally have auditory abilities that correspond to their hunting strategies. Bats that rely solely on echolocation to find food tend to make powerful and far-reaching echolocation calls and have smaller ears, while gleaners have large ears, lower hearing and produce quieter echolocation calls. Whatever hunting strategy is used or where they hunt, bats seem to be good at learning from each other. Not only do they learn from their own species, they also learn about other species of bats.