A group of ‘neuroecologists’ with too much time on their hands have been analyzing the unpleasantly high-pitched squeals of Egyptian fruit bats in order to find out what, exactly, the bats are talking about.
According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, some researchers from Tel Aviv University spent 75 days recording the annoying chatter from two groups of captive fruit bats, and then dumped 15,000 little screams into some some modified machine-learning software originally designed for recognizing human speech. They then compared the unpleasant screeching, as sorted by the computer, to video footage of the bats, and came to the conclusion that the bats were actually addressing specific comments to one another.
Egyptian fruit bats, common to Africa and the Middle East, are highly social creatures, and they like to hang together. Literally.
The calls they make, as they huddle together to roost, are pretty much impossible to tell apart if you’re a human and accustomed to the normal ‘screaming arguments in the kitchen’ type of communication. To most human ears, the bat screeches just sounds aggressive, without any real purpose.
“Basically, it just sounds like the bats are shouting at each other,” explained neuroecologist Yossi Yovel, who led the team of researchers.
(Now that you mention it, maybe it’s more like a screaming kitchen argument than we’d like to admit.)
But after running the squeals through the voice-recognition software and comparing the different calls to the corresponding video, Yovel’s team were able to sort the ‘shouts’ into four broad categories.
One type of screech seemed to be connected to an argument over food.
A slightly different squeal indicated that two males were exchanging pleasantries concerning access to a certain female’s attentions.
A third type of comment seemed to be saying something like, “Hey, man, give us some breathing room here.”
A fourth category, the analysis suggested, was related to uncomfortable sleeping arrangements.
(Why do I keep thinking of humans?)
The software was eventually able to pick out certain individual bats by their voices, and even make predictions when someone was about to get kicked out of bed and made to sleep on the couch.
From the Smithsonian article:
…By looking even more carefully at stresses and patterns, Yovel says, researchers may be able to tease out even more subtleties in the bat calls.
Of course, we can easily see where this is headed. The researchers are trying to learn bat language, so they can listen in, and find out who’s been spreading coronaviruses.
Which is exactly why I wanted to share this little story.
Global teams of scientists have been spending the past six months trying to track down the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and one theory, now gaining popularity, is that the novel coronavirus actually came from bats — not from China, but from China’s neighbor to the south, Vietnam. (Yes, this is a real theory.) The people who spend their spare time studying viruses know that the bats in Southeast Asia carry an amazing variety of coronaviruses. The bats don’t, however, seem to be much bothered by the viruses. (On the other hand, they do get mighty bothered when another bat fails to ‘social distance’.)
Bat coronaviruses can also infect humans. And as with bats, sometimes the viruses doesn’t cause even so much as a sniffle — if the humans in question have developed an immunity to the virus.
Here’s the crazy twist. Vietnam has a population of 97 million people. (The US has 329 million.) Since the first COVID-19 case appeared in Vietnam in February, the Vietnamese have confirmed 446 COVID-19 cases, as of yesterday. And no deaths. (The US has confirmed 4.4 million cases, and 151,000 fatalities.)
100 million Vietnamese. Zero fatalities. Does that strike anyone as slightly odd?
Maybe it shouldn’t, if we consider that the Vietnamese love to eat bats. Instead of trying to eavesdrop on the argumentative little mammals using expensive voice-recognition software… the people of Vietnam simply eat them. And, apparently, become immune to coronaviruses.
Instead of drinking Lysol and hydroxychloroquine, we could be enjoying bat tacos and bat burgers. And staying healthy.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.