A recent study unveiled this week says that the Mexican free tail bats produce a special ultrasonic calls which block the echolocation of other bats.
Researchers called these sounds "the feeding buzz," according to the BBC. This is the first time ever that scientists have observed this kind of behavior in any kind of species.
Normally, bats don't fly in darkness to hunt prey. They release a high pitch sound that increases as they get closer to their target. This process is known as echolocation. This ability is important for them to search for food, though the new report reveals one bat can effortlessly take others pretty through this sound.
Aoran Corcoran, the main author of the new study, was analyzing moths when he came across the bat calls. He reported that one bat was having a hard time catching its prey through echolocation. The second bat meanwhile was continuously making sounds to disrupt the echolocation of the first one.
"One bat was trying to capture an insect using its echolocation. The second bat was making another sound that looked to me like it might be trying to jam or disrupt the echolocation of the other bat," said Corcoran, who works at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, according to the BBC.
"Most of the time when another bat was making this jamming call, the bat trying to capture the moth would miss," he added.
The study was printed in the Nov. 6 edition of the journal Science.
In order to study this observation further, Corcoran had to illuminate the sky with a spotlight. On it, he attached a camera to record bats capturing insects.
He then reconstructed bats' flight paths to figure out their exact position as they released sounds. This was done by placing microphones at different locations to measure the time differences between sounds.
"We can stitch together all of the sounds that each bat makes and produce a map of their flight trajectories," said Corcoran.
Once the recorded sounds were played back to the bats as they were about to catch a moth, it sabotaged their hunt in the same way.
The finding was truly unexpected, Corcoran said to the BBC.
"Nobody has seen anything like this in any other animals which echolocate. It's not necessarily surprising that they're competing with each other [for food] but the fact that they've evolved this jamming signal is quite new.
"When a bat is just about to capture a moth we know they are susceptible to jamming at that point. When we look at it from an acoustics or physics point of view, the jamming sounds are produced at the right time and made at the right frequency that match the frequency the other bats are using."
Researchers will not look to establish whether this skill is unique to the Mexican free-tailed bat or if other bats do the same thing.
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