Making Friends, The Vampire Bat Way
Vampire bats aren’t so different from humans in some ways. These long-lived and extremely social bats form close social relationships – bonds that in humans, we’d call friendships. However, vampire bat friendships are characterized by mutual tongue baths and regurgitated blood. Now, research shows how these friendships form. In a study published today, scientists report that vampire bats gradually build trust through social grooming. The results support a model of how cooperative relationships form that could also apply to human friendships.
Read the whole story at National Geographic: How Vampire Bat Friendship is Surprisingly Like Our Own.
Vampire Bat Friendships
Mutual grooming and blood regurgitation form the basis of vampire bat friendships, which can last for years. And new research shows that relationships forged in captivity can persist once bats are back in the wild.
Read my latest Animal Minds post: Vampire Bat Friendships Persist from the Lab to the Wild.
Weird Ways Animal Moms Feed Their Babies
Any human mom can attest that keeping a baby fed and happy can be a Herculean task. That’s why some animal mothers have evolved some truly creative—and sometimes surprising—strategies. These include regurgitating nectar, sequestering toxins, and even self-sacrifice.
Read my latest for National Geographic's Weird & Wild news: Bats Regurgitate Nectar for Their Babies -- A New Discovery.
Artificial Lights and Bat Drinking Behavior
Darkness is a diminishing natural resource. Over the last hundredyears, human development and urbanization have changed the nocturnallandscape, making the nighttime sky 20 percent brighter.
This is bad news for nocturnal animals like bats, which depend on the protection offered by darkness. In my latest Animal Minds blog post, I take a look at how artificial lighting affects bat drinking behavior.
Read the story here: Do Artificial Lights Cause Drinking Problems in Bats?
Bats Provide Pest Control Services to Deer
There are a dozen or so species of blood-sucking flies that plaguewhite-tailed deer. There is little a deer can do to defend themselvesfrom these biting fly attacks.
But what is a painful nuisance to a deer is also a dinner buffet for bats. In a new study, researchers report numerous instances of insect-eating bats feeding on the swarms of flies attracted to white-tailed deer.
Read my post about it here: Bats Provide Pest Control Services to Deer