A recent study found that young bats babble similarly to humans as they learn to communicate.
Scientists from the Natural History Museum in Berlin eavesdropped on the sounds of 20 young bats and discovered that, like humans, they practice making noise before learning to communicate with others.
The white-throated bats (Saccopteryx bilineata), which are found in their natural habitats in Panama and Costa Rica, were recorded and filmed daily by researchers who monitored them from birth until weaning, a period that typically lasts around 3 months. The lifespan of this bat species is generally about 7 years.
They found that both male and female bats babbled every day for about 7 weeks, with their “babbles” consisting of “long chains of multi-tonal sounds” lasting up to 43 minutes at a time.
Young Saccopteryx bilineata bats also babble sounds when communicating.
The authors of the study noted that they do this to control their tongue, lips, and jaw, as well as their own sound system.
Rare Behavior
However, the researchers indicated that babbling or mimicking sounds is “very rare in the animal kingdom” and has so far only been observed in songbirds, specifically among male birds.
This is the first time another mammal species has been documented as using sound training behavior, and it appears in both male and female bats.
The researchers brought these recordings back to Germany and found intriguing similarities between the babbling characteristics of bats and humans.
Lara Burchardt, a co-author of the study, stated: “The babbling of bats is characterized by the repetition of syllables, similar to the characteristic syllable repetition ‘dadada’ in human babbling.”
The researchers hope that these findings will pave the way for further investigations into the development of sound abilities in both human and animal worlds, ultimately leading to insights into the evolutionary origins of human language.
Advanced Communication Abilities
Ahana Aurora Fernandez, the lead researcher, mentioned that in addition to mimicking the sounds of adult individuals, young bats also learn the songs of adult males.
“Bats are fascinating creatures; they are social animals with complex social lives, and many species will live in stable groups throughout their lives,” she said.
“What most people may not know is that many bat species have sophisticated social communication abilities. Everyone knows that they use echolocation to navigate and hunt, but what’s truly interesting is that there are many types of sounds they use to mediate those social interactions. And just like birds, bats also know how to ‘sing’. The songs are often produced at high frequencies that we cannot hear, but if we could, we would realize that the night is filled with bat songs,” she added.
