Vampire bats hunt and eat with trusted buddies, study shows
CBSN
A new study shows that female bats meet up with roostmates while foraging for food, cooperate on their hunting trips, and even chat with each other while sharing a meal.
Scientists attached tiny "backpack computers" to 50 female vampire bats, 23 of which had been captive for 2 years and 27 of which were wild. They then released the bats back to their wild roost on a cattle pasture in Tolé, Panama, for two weeks.
"Everything we've been studying with vampire bats has looked at what they're doing inside of a roost. What nobody has really known up until now is whether these social relationships serve any function outside the roost," study co-author Gerald Carter, assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at The Ohio State University, said in a press release.
