That tune coming from an old mine in B.C.? It’s probably a bat, singing a love song | 24CA News
The high-pitched tweets, trills and chirps sound like a refrain of birds within the treetops.
The songs, documented in new analysis, emanate from websites together with deserted mines in British Columbia. The voices belong to silver-haired bats.
Authors of a brand new examine say that whereas bats are well-known for utilizing sound to echolocate prey and navigate round objects, silver-haired bats have now been recognized because the second such species in North America that has been documented as singing.
Cori Lausen, director of bat conservation with the Wildlife Conservation Society, is among the examine’s authors printed in December within the Wildlife Society Bulletin.
It’s a “neat and rare discovery for North America,” mentioned Lausen, primarily based in Kaslo, B.C.
“The song patterns were relatively consistent with each song phrase consisting of a lead call, followed by a droplet call, and finishing with a series of multiple chirp calls,” says the examine.
Most of the recordings had been made in southern B.C., together with mines within the West Kootenays within the southern Interior, though the analysis that spanned a decade additionally befell in a number of U.S. states.
Although the perform of the songs is unknown, the researchers imagine it’s associated to courtship or mating. Alternative features couldn’t be dominated out, nonetheless.
Lausen mentioned that beforehand solely the Brazilian free-tailed bat, discovered largely within the U.S., was identified to sing, one thing the examine defines as “acoustic vocalizations with distinctive syllable types in series or in complex motifs.”
Bats usually produce pulses of sound and hearken to the echoes to seek out meals and keep away from crashing into issues. But Lausen mentioned a few of the sounds emitted by silver-haired bats in B.C. can “only be described as a song.”
In one recording, Lausen mentioned, two bats will be heard echolocating as they fly close to one another, earlier than one begins to sing.
“The fact that this recording starts with two bats and one is singing might indicate that the singing bat is trying to attract the other bat, but that this does not work,” she mentioned. “Or it might be that the singing bat is actually producing a song that is telling other bats to stay away.”
Lausen mentioned in some conditions lone silver-haired bats had been recorded singing, leaving researchers puzzled.
“We don’t know if there is another bat a long way off that it’s trying to communicate (with) or is it just flying around singing to his little heart’s content trying to hopefully pick up a mate somewhere,” mentioned Lausen.
Lausen mentioned it took a number of years to ascertain which species was singing. It was narrowed all the way down to silver-haired bats when the researchers began catching them in winter at places the place bats had been hibernating, and a few of the captured animals confirmed indicators of mating, one thing surprising and by no means earlier than documented within the species, mentioned Lausen.
The examine says greater than half of the documented singing was recorded in winter.
“We were able to sort of piece it together that this is probably what’s happening that they’re using this song to attract mates,” Lausen mentioned.
So, how properly do the bats sing?
The high-pitched sounds can’t be heard by human ears, and the recordings had been captured by what Lausen calls a “bat detector.” She mentioned she needed to take all of the recordings and gradual them down ten-fold to permit people to listen to.
“I guess I’m a little biased, but they do sound really lovely,” mentioned Lausen.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
