These Bats Buzz like Bees to Save Their Own Lives

Karen Hopkin is a scientist. My name is Karen Hopkin.

Have you ever been stuck in a game of "stop copying me", in which one person keeps repeating the other person's words? The person parroting you was just trying to annoy you. Some animals might use vocal mimicry to survive.

Researchers found that certain bats buzz like bees, which could make owls not eat them. There is a work in the journal.

The idea has been around for over twenty years.

There is a professor of ecology at the University of Naples.

A PhD student caught some greater mouse-eared bats while he was working. When I handled these bats, they buzzed like flying insects.

The bat buzzes.

Hopkin wanted to know what the point of the unusual hearing loss was. Was it a sound that made you feel distressed? Is there a warning cry to roost mates? Russo wondered if it was a clever attempt to trick potential predator into thinking that they might want to back off if they get stung.

It wasn't easy to test the idea. It took me a long time to come up with a good experiment.

The first thing the researchers did was compare the sounds of bats and insects.

Four stinging hymenopterans were recorded in the field. These bats are in the same place. The buzzes were compared to see if they could fool a predator.

They discovered that the sounds were similar. You are familiar with what a hornets sounds like.

The net is buzzing.

The bats do a good job of replicating that sound.

There is abat buzzing.

The soundprints were even more similar when the researchers included only the frequencies that owls can hear.

This was just the beginning. We had to see how an owl would respond to these noises.

A group of people exposed barn owls and tawny owls to the buzz of bees and bats and recorded their reactions.

It was good to see the owls step back. The sound source was identified as a potential danger.

The birds retreated from the noise. Is it possible that owls don't like noise in general? In order to test that out, the researchers broadcasted some bat sounds.

The owl's reaction was completely different in that instance. The owl was looking at the origin of the noises. It was thought to be a clue that a potentially delicious prey item was there.

The owls that were older when they were taken in by the rescue center were more perturbed by the buzzing than the birds that had been taken in as babies.

Adult animals that have experienced the dangers of stinging hymenopterans will think twice before approaching a buzzing sound. nave owls wouldn't rely on it, and they wouldn't have this experience.

The study was the first to show acoustic mimicry between mammals and insects. It probably won't be the last because of the positive buzz.

Karen Hopkin is for Scientific American's 60-second science.

This is a transcript of the show.