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More than a year had passed since their project before they had enough data to realize that their initial results were not a mistake. The signals from mothers and baby bats diverged, as mothers carefully tossed their babies into trees as they searched for food.
Dr. “We couldn’t have imagined that a mother would just leave a cub on a tree,” Goldshtein said.
Over five years of fieldwork, they saw a clear picture of what was going on. When Egyptian fruit bat cubs are a few weeks old, mothers carry them out of the cave as usual at the beginning of the night, then fly into a tree and leave them unattended in a nursery-like manner. The mother will return during the night, perhaps to nurse and warm the cub. When it has finished foraging, it carries the cub home.
The mother uses the same tree or several trees over and over. As the cub grows and becomes heavier, the mother moves to a tree closer to the cave.
Then, when the cub is about 10 weeks old, the mother leaves the cave alone. The young bat emerges from the cave for its first solo trip and flies straight to the place where it last landed, even though there are thousands of trees nearby. As the pup grows, it uses the tree to be opened as a starting point for its own exploration.
Dr. “We were surprised to see these results,” Goldshtein said. Baby bats somehow learn their way as they hang from their mother’s womb. The authors do not know exactly how this learning took place. While Egyptian fruit bats can echolocate using the clicks of their tongues, they think it might be by sight.
Behavioral ecologist Mirjam Knörnschild, who studies bats at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, said the authors did a “great job” in uncovering the poorly understood interactions between mother bats and their offspring. “The results strongly suggest that mothers are actively helping their offspring with orientation,” he said.
Dr. Knörnschild was surprised that the pups were able to memorize these routes while being carried upside down and never having to fly the routes themselves. “Personally,” he said, “I find that surprising.”
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