
Michael McCarthyIâll make love to you. If you want me to.
Bats are that ugly guy at karaoke who, while singing the male AND female parts of Evanescenceâs âBring Me To Lifeâ a decade after it was cool, suddenly becomes totally hot. That is to say, they arenât the cutest creatures in the animal kingdom, but they know how to work what they got â at least when they get to show off their vocal chops. Or so says new research published in Animal Behavior.
Bat expert and Texas A&M associate professor Mike Smotherman chased bats around the college campus for three years, eagerly taping their songs (which one imagines sound like amateur beat-boxing) and studying them. He found that males are not just humming the bat version of âThe Piña Colada Songâ on repeat â once a ladybat has inclined her ear, the male bat will switch things up to make sure she stays intrigued. According to Nature World News:
âThese bats can fly very fast, almost 30 feet per second,â Smotherman explained. âThey only have about one-tenth of a second to get the femalesâ attention.
âWe learned that they use a very specific song to grab the femaleâs attention as she flies by the roost. Once a bat joins their roost, the males mix up their songs, possibly to keep the females entertained long enough for mating to begin.â
Hmm, one-tenth of a second to get a ladyâs attention. What other species is that true of? I digress.
And I wasnât making up the part about them being ugly. Presumably they look more appealing to other bats than they do to us, but bats donât have a lot going for them in the looks department â no bright colors, no fancy plumage. Thereâs a reason itâs called âpeacockingâ and not âbattingâ (although, OK, âbatting your eyelashesâ does confuse matters):
One explanation for why the bats are such vociferous singers is that, unlike songbirds, which have brightly colored feathers that can be used to attract a mate, the bats are not brilliantly plumed.
âMost other animals rely upon visual cues to attract a mate, such as birds having brightly colored feathers,â Smotherman added. âWith bats, itâs all about sounds, which may be why bats use singing more than other mammals.â
Iggy Pop, Shane MacGowan, and Lemmy from Motorhead all reportedly went âDUHâ in unison when they heard the news.
