Biologists knew that some bats ate birds because they found feathers and bones in bat poop. But no one had actually seen how bats did it. They just assumed that it would’ve been a sight to behold since you’d be watching bats take down bigger, faster, meaner prey.
Ars Technica reports that Elena Tena, a biologist at Spain’s Doñana Biological Station, strapped miniature sensors to Nyctalus lasiopterus, the greater noctule bat, and discovered that to eat a delicious bird meal, bats were engaging in some death-defying aerial dogfights.
Greater noctule bats are the biggest in Europe. They have a wingspan of around 45 centimeters and the body weight of a fun-sized Snickers bar. Tena’s team figured they couldn’t use cameras because they were too heavy, so they built ultralight sound and motion trackers that logged all sorts of data, like altitude and echolocation clicks.
Europe’s Giant Bats De-Wing and Eat Birds in Mid-Air
Fourteen bats were tagged and tracked for over two years. The data showed that the researchers could safely toss out previous theories about bats ambushing sleeping birds in trees.
Instead, it showed bats flying up to 1.2 kilometers high into the night sky before swooping down on migrating songbirds to aerially ambush them. Each chase could last up to three minutes, ending with the unfortunate bird letting out a “distress call” that probably translated to “I’m a goner! Save yourselves!”
Here’s a particularly hard-core discovery team made: they found bird wings scattered beneath hunting zones, suggesting the bats bite off the bird’s wings to cut down on drag and then chow down mid-air. Audio data even caught 23 (likely disgusting) minutes of airborne munching that would’ve driven anyone with misophonia insane.
The bats probably hunt this way for the sake of efficiency. Landing burns energy, and when you’re operating at bomber altitude, you don’t want to waste fuel. Plus, these bats occupy a chunk of the sky unoccupied by other hunters.
It’s too high for owls, and too dark for falcons. If the only place they can get a guaranteed meal is in one of the few slices of the sky where no other predators roam, you gotta take what you can get and adapt.
Noctule bats are endangered, but Tena hopes understanding their high-altitude habits could help protect them.
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