Scientists Discover Unique Bats That Can Protect Themselves Like Bees

Scientists have found a species of bat that can protect itself. (photo credit: Nils Bouillard/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Scientists have found a species of bat that can protect itself from predators of owls. The way the bat does it is quite unique, it buzzes like a bee.

The bat is a mammal known as Batesian mimicry, and is one of the rare examples of this type of acoustics, where an animal can imitate the sound of another animal to prevent predators from approaching it.

Acoustic mimicry was discovered by chance by scientists while studying the larger mouse-eared bat, a species native to Europe. The team caught a bat measuring up to 9 cm from head to tail, with a wingspan of 40 cm.

"In Batesian mimicry, an unarmed species imitates an armed one to deter predators. Imagine a bat that has been captured but not killed by a predator. The buzzing sound may fool the predator for a fraction of a second, enough for flight," said Professor Danilo Russo from the University of Naples.

Launching SkyNews, Tuesday, May 10, Professor Danilo said the buzzing sound of the bat was created when he finished catching it with a net.

"When we handle bats to get them out of the net or process them, they always buzz like wasps," Professor Danilo said.

The hum appears to be an unusual distress call and scientists wonder whether it was intended as an evolutionary warning to other bats or to deter predators.

They found that the bat's buzzing sound was similar to that of a stinging insect, and then they played the sound when scientists approached captive owls, the bat's natural predators, to see how the bats reacted.

"Different owls react in varying ways, possibly depending on their previous experience. However, they consistently react to the buzz of insects and bats by moving further away from the speaker. In contrast, the sound of potential prey makes them move closer," said the research team.

Interestingly, from the study, which has been published in the journal Cell Biology, when they adapted sound analysis to exclude acoustic parameters that owls couldn't hear, the hum of bats was even more similar to that of bees.

"It is somewhat surprising that owls represent evolutionary pressures that shape acoustic behavior in bats in response to the unpleasant experiences owls have with stinging insects," explains Professor Danilo.

"This is just one of the endless examples of the beauty of the evolutionary process," he added. He noted that many other vertebrate species also buzz when disturbed, something they plan to investigate in future studies.