Fringe-lipped bats in the forests of Panama use a similar hunting strategy to the lions of the Serengeti, which they implement more efficiently.
Instead of lying in wait to ambush their prey, the bats ‘hang and wait’ before taking down frogs almost as big as themselves, a Current Biology study reveals.
Fringe-lipped bats (Trachops cirrhosus) are one of nine known species of carnivorous bats. They weigh as much as a standard bag of crisps, and because they are little, researchers expected they would target prey much smaller than themselves. Not so.
Scientists fitted 20 wild bats with mini 'biologger backpacks’, which enabled them to eavesdrop on the animals’ nocturnal activities.
The bats spent 89 per cent of their time stationary, conserving energy. Then when they did attack, it was targeted and quick. The average hunting flight lasted just eight seconds and instead of little frogs, the bats took down relative giants. This included some frogs that weighed two thirds of the bats’ bodyweight.
This is similar to the hunting tactics used by lions, which also bide their time before taking down big prey. “It was incredible to discover that these bats hunt like big predators trapped in tiny bodies,” says lead author Leonie Baier from Aarhus University. “The discovery that an animal this small can do this really turned our assumptions upside down.” But whilst lions succeed just 14% of the time, the fringe-lipped bats were successful 50 per cent of the time.
The finds helped to resolve a conundrum; namely, how does this small predator, with a high metabolic rate and limited energy reserves manage to catch such big prey? Answer? By combining their ‘hang-and-wait’ strategy with hearing, vision and echolocation. The bats have low-frequency hearing and are already known to eavesdrop on frog mating calls. By combining these senses, they can detect and kill large prey with remarkable efficiency.
Their method is low risk - high gain, but it relies on the presence of pristine ecosystems containing high densities of prey. Now, with biodiversity declining and ecosystems dwindling, the authors are severely concerned for the future of these miniature predators.
Top image: Fringe-lipped bat catching a tungara frog from a pond, captured in an artificial, natural-looking environment set up by the researchers for the study. Credit: Grant Maslowski
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