The Social Life of Bats

Bats are small, and mammals, but are very different from "small mammals". They live for 10 to 30+ years, typically have just one or two pups per year, and spend the whole summer raising their young.

In a roost full of one million bats(!), a mamma bat can recognize and return to her own waiting pup. We record such a diversity of "social calls" with full-spectrum bat detectors that they almost certainly have individual names for each other.

Bats have culture in the sense that they pass on knowledge from individual to individual, over generations, for decades or centuries. Migratory Mexican Free-Tailed Bats will travel many hundreds of miles to return to a specific cave roost, which they learned from their family and friends, and will teach to their offspring. Different populations of the same species of bat will have learned to return to a different cave roost.

They have an intelligence that we cannot fully understand, living in a world where one of their primary senses is echolocation. Contrary to that old saying "blind as a bat", they've also got the 5 senses that we have as well, including good sight. When a Big-Eared Corynorhinus looks you in the eyes, you can see intelligence staring back at you.

(I am speaking exclusively about echolocating microbats, not "flying fox" megabats. I have ~15 years experience recording and analyzing bat echolocation and managing bat hibernacula and maternity roost caves.)

Bats best socialise amongst themselves. I like bats, we have fruitbats locally but they're best loved at a distance I find.

Bats socialize more than me. Good to know.