We know that in the animal world, elephants have a special ability to remember, but no one can guess that bats hiding in the dark will easily defeat us in the memory game. It turns out that little leather mice would still recognize a phone’s ringtone four years later, if they had a more serious business with it.
They are holding their ears
Hello, Patma is calling the Batcop, did you have breakfast? Well, that’s not how you should imagine the phone adventure of bats. In a new study, wild bats were trained to associate a specific phone ringtone with the reward food, and now comes the miracle: the ringtone has been remembered for four years! And with that, bats that don’t seem to be very smart have run into monkeys and crows in a memory league.
In the journal Current Biology Back The results shed new light on the cognitive abilities of bats. researchers 49 predators, It is widespread in Central and South America The wrinkled-nosed bat was taught to fly toward a specific bell in exchange for food. These bats hunt by listening to the mating calls of certain species of frogs and tadpoles, and based on their voice They skillfully distinguish between poisonous and non-toxic species.
The scientists placed a tasty bite on a speaker and then played a mating call for a male tundra frog, one of bats’ favorite foods. Then they began to repeat the ringtone alternately with the sound of the frog, and eventually the sound of the phone completely replaced the frog’s call. In the researchers’ videos, bats react by turning their ears toward the repeated sound. They were also played with three more tones, but these didn’t come with tasty bites, so they were also taught to differentiate between tones.
At the end of the experiment, the animals were dissected and released. Over the next four years, scientists tested eight bats that participated in the experiment, and it was established that the bats did not forget to train: if they heard the bell, they flew towards the speaker even after four years.
Why is long-term memory not good?
Long-term memory has advantages and disadvantages in the life of wild animals, for example, it is useful to remember the sounds of delicious foods even if they hear their calls rarely or only during certain seasons. With a good long-term memory, there is no need for time-consuming experimental luck learning, and they can instantly pounce on rare prey when they hear it.
Mae Dixon, an evolutionary and ecological biologist at Ohio State University and one of the study’s authors, was shocked by the bat findings, and so on. He said:
One year would be a reasonable period of time to preserve memory, especially if we consider the energy requirements of long-term memory, but four years is a very long time to preserve a voice that may never be heard again. From a metabolic standpoint, long-term memory uses a large amount of energy and can slow down decision-making, but it can also hinder the recovery of new memories.
Through studies like this, scientists hope to learn more about when long-term memory is beneficial for animals and when it is more of a hindrance.
The findings are also important because researchers do not know very well about the long-term memory of wild animals. Much memory research has been done, but it has been done on dolphins, turtles, and sea lions in captivity.
(Cover Image: Avalon / Universal Images Group / Getty Images)
