a new study on the communication patterns of bats could help us understand the way we interact with others — and could even lay some of the groundwork for improving human mental health.
the research, published in the journal science , comes from the university of california, berkeley’s neurobat lab . researchers studied how egyptian fruit bats’ brains process complex information when they’re in large groups by putting wireless neural recording devices and wireless vibration sensors around the bats’ necks like necklaces.
“these vibration sensors, paired with our ability to wirelessly record neural data from multiple bats at the same time, allowed us to create this experiment in which the bats could freely behave and spontaneously communicate,” boaz styr, a postdoctoral researcher in the neurobat lab and one of the study’s co-authors, told berkeley’s news outlet .
advertisement
a previous study published by the neurobat lab found that bats’ brains “sync up” when they’re communicating: there are correlations in their brain activity when they’re making noise, fighting, grooming or sniffing each other. “the inter-brain correlations were so strong that you could easily see them in the raw data,” one of the researchers said when the work was published in 2019 . “this is the first time in my career where a result was so robust that it popped out from the data like that.”
“bats can recognize and have stable social relationships with other individual bats, even over long periods of time and in different circumstances,” maimon rose, one of the study’s co-authors, told berkeley’s news outlet .
bats are very social, and often live in caves with “thousands of squabbling roommates,” as berkeley news put it: they fight over things like food, mates, and places to sleep.
advertisement