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File image of a bat. OLIVER LINDECKE
Animals sometimes pretend to be another to survive. It’s called Batesian mimicry and, until now, no case of acoustic imitation by a mammal was known, but that is the case of the Batesian bat. mouse ears, which knows how to imitate the buzzing of hornets.
A study published today by Current Biology describes this behavior observed in this bat, an evolutionary trick that allows the imitator to protect itself from possible predators and that, in the case of reproducing sounds, it had only been seen in insects.
Mouse-eared bats mimic the buzzing sound of hornets, a stinging insect, to deter owls from eating them.
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A bat that has been captured, but not killed by the predator, if it is able to emit a buzzing “might” fool you for a fraction of a second, long enough to run away, he explained. One of the authors of the study, Danilo Russo, from the Federico II University of Naples Studies (Italy).
The expert was carrying out field work with bats when he realized that these , in certain situations, they always buzzed like hornets.
Among other tests,the team played these sounds to captive owls and owlsto observe their reaction and systematically moved away.
The researchers say the results provide the first example of interspecific mimicry between mammals and insects, as well as as one of the few examples of acoustic mimicry.
The buzzes are even more similar when heard the way owls hear them, >indicated Russian, who does not have data to ensure that the owls that avoid the sound is because they have already been stung before, although it is a probability.
However, yes. there is other evidence that birds avoid these potentially harmful insects. For example, when hornets settle in nest boxes or tree cavities, birds often don’t even explore them and don’t nest there.