The spooky season is a great time to learn about bats, the only mammals capable of true flight! Because bats are nocturnal, we don’t see them during the day (unless one has wiggled into our house—but that’s another story). We look for them on evening walks and enjoy the slightly spooky thrill of seeing them swooping overhead. We know they’re not trying to get tangled in our hair or bite us—they’re just hunting for insects, which is one of the many helpful things that bats do for the environment.
Bats, which live on every continent except Antarctica, also pollinate plants and disperse seeds, both really important for the food we eat and the plants and other animals in our ecosystems. Worldwide, more than 3,000 species of plants depend on bats for seed dispersal.
Plus, the average bat eats its weight in insects every night! If you live in a place with mosquitos, you know how helpful this is.
According to the National Science Foundation, their voracious appetite for bugs even saves us money.
All told, according to a 2011 study published in Science, insect consumption by bats reduces the pesticide bill of the agriculture industry in the United States by roughly $22.9 billion per year on average. Another study, partially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), calculated the average annual value of Brazilian free-tailed bats as pest control for cotton production in eight counties of south-central Texas at about $741,000.
Bats also inspire people to make cool new inventions—like some types of sonar patterned after bat echolocation. Bats echolocate their prey by emitting very high-frequency sounds (which humans can’t even hear). When that sound bounces off of insects and other objects as the bat flies, the bat can tell, just by the sound bouncing back, what’s around it—a tasty bug, or a tree it needs to avoid as it flies through the dark.
But you probably knew that! What you might not know is that bats share something pretty special with humans—or, more specifically, bat babies (or pups) share something with human babies. Not just a love of staying up all night, but… babbling!
I missed this story on NPR this summer, but heard about it in my sociolinguistics class last week:
A paper published on Thursday in the latest issue of the journal Science finds similarities between the babbling of human infants and the babbling of the greater sac-winged bat (Saccopteryx bilineata) — a small species of bat that lives in Central and South America.
The researchers believe that bats and humans both evolved babbling as a precursor to more complex vocal behavior such as singing, or, in the case of people, talking.
"It's crazy," that two species which are so distantly related both babble, says Ahana Fernandez, an animal behavioral ecologist at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Germany.
Fernandez, a co-author on the new paper, hopes that the similarities in infant sounds might eventually reveal common genes used in the process of vocal learning.
Here’s a video explaining this babbling behavior:
And here is Dr. Fernandez in the field!
Did you know that some bats can have wingspans of almost six feet? (Yikes!)
Bea loved this video of the world’s biggest bats, the flying foxes of Australia!
Another way bats are like us? They’ve been suffering through a pandemic too. Bats have been dealing with white-nose syndrome, a contagious and deadly disease that has killed millions of hibernating bats in North America (in some places, more than 90 percent of the bats) since 2006. Climate change hasn’t been linked directly to white-nose syndrome, but it does cause hibernation disruption, which can make bats more susceptible to the disease. Habitat destruction puts all of us at greater risk of the spread of dangerous pathogens.
And finally, bats are sensitive to climate change, which can affect their habitats, the insects available to them, and their life cycles and ability to raise their young. These adorable baby flying foxes are all orphans—their mothers died in extreme heat events. Their human foster mom has wrapped in tiny blankets to keep them warm, but also to simulate the loving care of their moms, who have long pregnancies, few offspring at one time, and spend an enormous amount of time caring for and teaching their pups…
… also like us!
More on Friday about bats in books, bats in mythology, and how you can help bats and their ecosystems.
What do you think of bats? Scary? Fascinating? Adorable? All of the above?
There's a little park near my parents' place that has a swing set in the middle of a small clearing. Trees line either side with a creek nearby. One of my favorite things to do is to go to that little park in the middle of the summer during twilight. Bats fly back at forth just overhead. The contrast with the dark blue sky makes them easy to see and the quiet makes it easy to hear their wings flapping. So fun to be still there and observe.