Some Bat Pups Babble Just Like Human Babies

Pups of one bat species show a remarkable similarity to infants of our own species in the way they emit complex streams of syllables.

Great sac-winged bats are a field biologist’s dream. They hunt insects at dawn and dusk, stay awake much of the day and rest at night. “They like fairly well lit places,” said Mirjam Knörnschild, a behavioral ecologist at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin who studies the bats, which roost on trees or the sides of buildings rather than in gloomy, guano-filled caves. And the bats, about two inches long, keep enough distance between themselves to tell one from another. “We mark them with colored plastic rings on their forearms,” Dr. Knörnschild said. “We can also use a directional microphone and record the vocalizations of individual bats.”