Actual Article ->> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1007/3
(with video)
After learning about birds and how they seem to learn their songs at a young critical phase, I decided to find out more about this phenomenon and came about this article. Young bats are known to imitate the noises or songs of adult males they hear in the nest. What is interesting and adds another twist to this story is that the males that are in the nest aren't necessarily their biological parents. This supports the idea that although their is a species genetic component to their song learning bats can learn the songs of other unrelated bats and not just from their own parents.
I think that this study is very important to animal communication. The bird models we have learned about in class are great but a mammal example adds more to understanding the link between imitation and actual speech comprehension and production.
posted by Alliam Ortiz
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It is very interesting that the males in the nest are not necessarily the biological parents. Does this mean that the young are raised by the community rather than just the parents? Would it matter if it was learned from the male parent or not? Is there individuality in each song? It's great that you connected this to what we learned in class.
ReplyDelete-Tricia Carlson
I don't know much about the social system of bats quite frankly. It did strike me as odd that the male bats in the young's nest would not be biological parents to that set of young. I agree with Tricia that this was a good connection of what we are doing in class. (I am geared up to hear about any other animal besides birds actually.) Are these songs audible to humans?
ReplyDeleteposted by: Jess Bouchard (1)
I, too, express my gratitude at some animal communication information not related to birds. Bats really are fascinating creatures. They seem to have very interest social structures across the board (i.e. vampire bats that regurgitate blood to feed their buds). I did not know even know that bats had songs. Did the article mention what the primary uses of the songs are?
ReplyDelete- Deysha Rivera
In all honesty, I don't know much about bats. I was actually surprised to read in your article that they sing. I know that they use echolocation, but I have never thought about bats singing. So if bats learn songs from unrelated bats that raise them, does that mean they can learn songs from neighboring bats? What about different closely related species of bats?
ReplyDelete-Crystal Young
Interesting article. Is there a reason why the young learn the song of the male and not the female? If they are learning songs from bats that are not their parents, are these adults also acting as their parents by providing parental care?
ReplyDeletePosted by Vanessa Raphael
This is interesting. Why do the bats communicate? Why are they raised by different parents? I don't know much about bats, but I thought they used echolocation? Are all of the songs about the same in the same species? Do the females learn the song?
ReplyDelete-Alyson Paige