How do social interactions change in the face of illness? As humans face potential global pandemics we look to nature for examples. Close observation of another highly social animal, the vampire bat, sheds light on how interactions change—or do not change—as individuals become sick.
Why do some male bats have sticky, odorous arms? The first clues only led to more questions. But now a new sleuth, Mariana Muñoz-Romo, described by a colleague as “probably the world’s expert on chemical communication in a bat species,” is on the case.
Hubert Szczygieł recently arrived at STRI in Panama and is already becoming one of Gamboa’s most awesome natural historians.
Eavesdropping behavior in the canopy may answer questions about how acoustic interplay among animals has developed over millions of years in the forest
As some of the most savvy and sophisticated predators out there, bats eavesdrop on their prey and even on other bats to collect a wide variety of information about their prey.
Bats can find motionless insects on leaves in the dark. This was thought to be impossible, because the acoustic camouflage provided by the leaves should confuse their echolocation system. Inga Geipel and colleagues discovered how they overcome this problem.
