A marriage call became a weapon of this predator: as a swinging batted bat seek victims

To spread: in dense tropical forests, which extend from Panama to Brazil, there is a unique predator that uses an unconventional hunting strategy. A swarming bat, known for its warty features and acute auditory perception, does not rely solely on vision or smell to detect prey. About it writes The Washington Post. Instead, the mouse listens carefully to the marriage calls of frogs and frogs, using these sounds as a hint to find their next food.

However, not all amphibians calls to a safe or delicious feast. In focus, technology appeared its Telegram channel. Subscribe to not miss the most info and interesting news from the world of science! Some frogs are poisonous or too large, which is a danger to the bat. In this regard, the question arises: how do these bats distinguish, what urges signal the corresponding prey and which ones do not? A recent study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B gives an idea of ​​this behavior.

Scientists at the Smithson Institute of Tropical Research, including the leading author Logan James, conducted experiments to determine whether the Bats have the ability to distinguish between delicious and tasteless prey innate or studied. They protested 21 adults and 19 young toopic bats bats, reproducing the records of marriage calls for 15 different types of frogs and frogs. The bats were observed in a controlled environment to evaluate their predatory interest in each call.

The results of the study revealed a clear difference between the reaction of adults and young bats. Adult bats showed a strong predatory reaction to the calls of lazy species of frogs, in fact ignoring the calls of poisonous or unmanaged prey. In contrast, young bats responded without parsing, often showing interest in the calls of poisonous frogs that adults avoided.

This indicates that the ability to distinguish safe and dangerous prey is not laid from birth, but develops over time under the influence of experience. Further analysis showed that although young bats could evaluate the size of potential prey on the basis of the characteristics of the urge, they lacked an understanding of their toxicity.

This means that young bats can first use the size as a major signal, gradually learning to associate certain sounds with negative experiences, such as swallowing toxic prey. Subsequently, this learning process improves their hunting strategies, enabling them to make more prudent decisions as to which calls should be pursued. This study perfectly demonstrated the course of experimental learning in the development of predatory behavior in the robber -like bats.

It also emphasizes the complex interaction between the predator and the victim in the ecosystem of tropical forests, where auditory signals play a crucial role in survival. As the bats grow older, their ability to interpret these signals and act in accordance with them becomes more and more sophisticated, which illustrates the dynamic nature of learning in the animal world. Earlier, focus wrote about how scientists crossed a pig with beans to obtain an alternative to pork.