Wild Bats Can Recognize a Phone's Ringtone Four Years Later
The findings could help researchers understand more about the advantages and disadvantages of long-term memory in animals
Sarah Kuta
Daily Correspondent
June 27, 2022
Wild bats trained to link a specific phone ringtone with a food reward can remember the sound for more than four years, new research suggests. This would put their long-term memory skills on par with other wildlife memory masters like monkeys and crows.
The findings, published last week in the journal Current Biology, may offer new insights into the cognitive abilities of bats, as well as how animals use their long-term memory in their daily lives.
Researchers caught 49 predatory fringe-lipped bats— Trachops cirrhosis, a medium-sized bat common in Central and South America—in the wild and trained them to fly toward a specific ringtone by rewarding them with food. These bats hunt by listening for the mating calls of several frog and katydid species. Cleverly, the bats can tell the difference between poisonous species and non-poisonous species just by their different sounds.
To train the bats, the scientists placed a baitfish snack above a speaker, then played the mating call of the male túngara frog, one of the bats’ favorite foods. As the study continued, the researchers gradually mixed in the sound of a ringtone—the three-note text message sound common on smartphones—with the frog call; eventually, the ringtone replaced the frog call entirely. In videos published in the paper, the bats can be seen visibly reacting, twitching and turning their ears, towards the repeated sound of the ringtone. The researchers also introduced three other ringtones that were not associated with a food reward, thus training the bats to recognize one specific ringtone.
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/wild-bats-can-recognize-a-phones-ringtone-four-years-later-180980314/
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