Researchers Find Out Bats Argue A Lot After “Translating” Their Talk

Researchers at Tel Aviv University, Israel used a machine learning algorithm to decode the squeaks Egyptian fruit bats make in their roost, revealing that they “speak” to one another as individuals, reports  Phys.org.

Nature reports that neuroecologist Yossi Yovel and his colleagues recorded a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, for 75 days. Using a modified machine learning algorithm originally designed for recognising human voices, they fed 15,000 calls into the software. They then analysed the corresponding video to see if they could match the calls to certain activities.

Fruit Bat

They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories.

One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close.

In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people.

It was pointed out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds. The research appears in the journal Scientific Reports.

We have shown that a big bulk of bat vocalisations that previously were thought to all mean the same thing, something like ‘get out of here!’ actually contain a lot of information,” Yovel tells The Guardian. By looking even more carefully at stresses and patterns, Yovel says, researchers may be able to tease out even more subtleties in the bat calls.