Researchers studying how singing bats communicate

Bats are the most vocal mammals other than humans, and understanding how they communicate during their nocturnal outings could lead to better therapys for human speech disorders, say scientists at Texas A&M University.

Thousands of bats native to Central Texas fly overhead each night singing songs of complex syllables but at frequencies too high for humans to hear.

Texas A&M researcher Michael Smotherman is trying to understand how Mexican Freetail bats organize syllables into songs and how their communication is associated with the brain. If we can identify those areas in a bat brain [responsible for communication], we can learn more about how a normal [human] brain generates and orchestrates complex communication sequences, Smotherman says. And by understanding how that works, we can then come up with testable hypotheses about what might be going on in speech disorders.

The scientists in Smothermans lab are studying two aspects of bat communication. In behavioral studies, they examine sex differences and seasonal variations in communication, and in physiology studies they try to locate the parts of the bat brain active during communication.

Mexican Freetail bats sing mostly in ultrasonic frequencies that are right above the upper limit of human hearing. Humans can sometimes hear little bits of bat songs, however, when parts of syllables drop low enough.