How Europe’s largest bat grabs the middle air of birds and eats

After about 25 years of research, the mystery has finally been resolved: Europe’s largest bat not only eats small birds – it hunt them and captures more than a kilometer from the ground. And it eats them without landing.

An international team of researchers has highlighted how Europe’s largest bat and uses small birds. Results, now published in ScienceMake an interesting read, a story of aerial acne, pursuit and forecasts.

Every year, billions of songs migrate between their growing places and winter areas. During the day, many species of hunters flew high and traveled at night. But it does not endanger the journey. Battle at night.

To ride on the back of bats

Researchers have practically started riding on the back of Europe’s largest bat species – maximum nitools (Nitolas Lespatters) – equipped them with a small “back bag” consisting of organisms at the University of Abhis. These devices record the movements of bats, acceleration, height and sounds (including acoustic calls of the bat), which reveals their hunting techniques as they suffer more than a kilometer from the ground in the dark tomorrow.

New research shows that these bats can fill high in the sky at night so that uncertain birds can be searched and attacked. Unlike some insects, the birds cannot hear the calls of the echoes of the bats and they can only feel the danger at the last minute, which gives them little chance to escape.

At such a distance the bird detection capacity is due to their rapid and relatively low -frequency ultrasound acoloccan calls. Once they get closer enough to choose their target, they attack.

Dare divers

Biology data shows that the bats stood, rapidly moving the divers to the ground, like a fighter aircraft in dogfits.

They drowned vertically for 30 and 176 seconds, respectively, and increased their wings threefold by beating their wings sharply and severely and emitting invading calls.

The badge that was diving for 30 seconds eventually lost. Birds are at least like bats in the air.

Twenty -three minutes of chewing

However, the other bat grabbed his victim near the ground after about three minutes. The microphone recorded 21 hassle calls from the birds (one Robin), followed by a 23 -minute chewing sound from the badge when it flew to a lower altitude.

Songbird wings analyzes found in the sons hunting fields combined with X -ray and DNA analyzes, only two bats paints a clear picture of the final act:

The bats cut and kill the birds, then lose weight and drag their wings. Researchers believe that the bats then move the membrane between their back legs like a pouch and eat mid -flights to the birds.

Wild strategies

“We know that Song Birds offers wild invasive tactics like Lo Loop and Spring to avoid predators like Hawks during the day. And they use the same plans against bats at night. It is interesting that the bats not only catch them and eat and eat.” Also. Laura Student from the Department of Biology at Ahars University.

He is one of the main authors of this study and has for many years improved and implemented the Boylogger technology in his bat’s research, which leads to many scientific articles and surprises.

At a time when he finalized the data collection and analyzed for this dissertation, there was a post post post at the Zoo and Wildlife Research (Libnies-IZW) in Studisolut Berlin.

A 25 -year -old speculation

For a couple of decades, it is known that at least three big bat species have eaten small birds in the flight. The most part of this knowledge is from the tireless work of the Spanish Beet researcher Carlos Abbes and his colleagues at the Dwana Biological Station (CSIC) in Seoul.

About 25 years ago, Abus discovered the wings in the fall of more and more nutrients, and since then it has collected evidence that these bats catch and eat birds.

The Dwana Research Team has long studied maximum nutrition, which is an extraordinary and difficult monitoring monitor. They have installed the “smart” artificial roast in the Dana Reserve and each bat with a small subcutaneous microchip that is detected through a antenna in each roast. The system logs, stores data, and sends direct warnings to the team’s mobile phone.

The year of the pursuit

For years, researchers tried to uncover how the bats were able to catch and eat birds in flight.

Abez says, “We knew that more and more Nakul catchs insects in flight and eats, so we assumed that he did the same to the birds – but we need to prove it.”

This assumption was initially met with doubts within the scientific community, as some birds weigh up to half the weight of the bat itself and thus reduce the ability to fly bats.

Since bats hunt at night, it is impossible to chase it. Researchers instead tried monitoring cameras on roast, military radar, ultrasound recorders, and GPS trackers attached to the hot air balloon. The main challenge was to find the Light of Enough to carry the sons.

Now, with the lightweight devices of the University of Arshas – and the way Ibiz has come close to retirement – the team has finally captured a large number in the act.

Necessary for the protection of the bat

For Elena Tina, also a central author of this study, hearing the recording of the sound of birds’ troubled calls, was a severe moment after sudden silence and long chewing noise after so many years of effort:

“Although it expresses sympathy for hunting, it is a part of nature. We knew that we had documented extraordinary documents. For the team, he confirmed that what we were looking for.

Fortunately, there is little cause of concern about the sons of the Songbird population. More and more nutrients are extremely rare and, in many areas, their forest houses disappear as soon as they disappear.

Thus, there are important implications of protection from this discovery. In order to design effective protection and management strategies, it is important to understand the maximum nutrition environment and hunting behavior.