The pups were able to hear their mothers but were also played recordings of entire bat colonies chattering away.
In a report published in the journal PLOS Biology, the scientists describe raising 14 bat pups in artificial colonies. Usually when researchers set out to examine how various species – especially mammals – learn to vocalise, factors such as genetic programming and environmental influence prove impossible to pick apart.Ī team led by Yossi Yovel at the school of zoology at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, however, came up with a novel way of interrogating the question. The discovery throws up an interesting challenge to the idea that humans are unique in the way we pick up language skills.
Young bats pick up the dialect of their colony rather than simply mimicking the sounds made by their mothers, research has demonstrated.
0 kommentar(er)
