Intranasal oxytocin increases social grooming and food sharing in the common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus I gave two groups of highly familiar captive vampire bats intranasal oxytocin. In the first group intranasal oxytocin led to larger regurgitated food donations. In the second group, I gave a larger dose and found that oxytocin also increased allogrooming between adult … Continue reading New paper on giving intranasal oxytocin to vampire bats

About 7% of 340 adult vampire bats and 33% of 258 younger bats (<2 years of age) failed to feed on a given night. But when they do feed, wild vampire bats fill up like water balloons. Jon Flanders took this picture of a male vampire bat. He had originally caught this bat around the … Continue reading Foraging vampire bats can expect big meals or none at all

In an upcoming paper, I show that when a female bat feeds another bat, this allows her to add another possible donor to her own 'social safety net'. There's an obvious benefit to her: bats with larger sharing networks are more successful at getting fed. But there’s potentially a more subtle benefit. If a hungry bat … Continue reading Can friendships reduce the burden on family?

The social brain hypothesis predicts that species with larger neocortex volume for their body size should possess more social complexity [1]. Does this apply to bats? It's not really clear. Wilkinson [2] found that relative cortex volume did not correlate with colony size, but it was greater among those bats with stable social groups. Colony size … Continue reading Does neocortex size predict social grooming in bats?