“Prepared learning” in bats

I had a brief discussion with someone at the International Behavioral Ecology meetings about evidence in bats for prepared learning--the phenomenon that animals learn some associations faster than others. More importantly, the notion here is that animals learn things faster when those lessons would be most common and necessary in the environments in which they evolved. … Continue reading “Prepared learning” in bats

Summer 2016 updates

Our two undergraduate interns Yeli Garcia (Earlham) and Emily Dong (Cornell) just completed their independent projects and finished their seasons in Panama. Yeli's project was entitled "Guano scent as a cue for roost-finding in vampire bats" and Emily's was "Co-feeding and food sharing in vampire bats". They both worked hard, did a terrific job, and I'm … Continue reading Summer 2016 updates

Recent media article about vampire bats and friendship

Sapiens Magazine just put out an article about vampire bats and friendship. The author Leah Shaffer did a great job, probably the most accurate media story on the vampire bats I can remember. Usually, journalists get a lot wrong, but they did a great job fact-checking this one. Also, below is an edited transcript of … Continue reading Recent media article about vampire bats and friendship

Summer interns for the vampire bat project

Every season, two interns will be assisting the vampire bat food-sharing project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama. These are our two STRI-funded interns for Summer 2016. Emily Dong is a major in the Biology and Society, and will be starting her third year at Cornell (my alma mater). Emily is always positive, … Continue reading Summer interns for the vampire bat project

Social inheritance in vampire food-sharing networks?

We are soon to be wrapping up several analyses and starting some new ones. I want to mention one analysis that never really got off the ground, but it's a good idea. My intern Jana asked me a great question: Does a female vampire bat inherit some of her food-sharing partners from her mother? This question … Continue reading Social inheritance in vampire food-sharing networks?

New paper on vampire bat communication

Our newest paper is Common vampire bat contact calls attract past food-sharing partners in the journal Animal Behaviour. You can download the paper for free until June 12, 2016 here at this link: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1SwLKmjLdkSa It's a simple playback experiment where we disentangled kinship and food sharing as predictors of a bat's attraction to calls of different individuals. … Continue reading New paper on vampire bat communication

Non-maternal allogrooming of pups

We have four new vampire bats. The bats here at the field station have been breeding in captivity, which is a good sign that they are doing well, and it ensures we have some highly related dyads for our experiments. My first intern, Jana, just took this neat video of a mother and her new pup … Continue reading Non-maternal allogrooming of pups

Q & A with our new interns

Every season, two volunteer interns will be assisting the vampire bat food-sharing project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama. These are our first two interns for Spring 2016. A month ago, eighteen-year-old whiz kid Jana Nowatzki (left) joined our project from Konstanz, Germany. Jana is a surprisingly self-motivated, bright, positive, and precocious student. Armed … Continue reading Q & A with our new interns

An essay about caves and the origins of echolocation

Caves and the origins of echolocation Imagine that you are in a cave, a very familiar cave, but with no light. Do you think you could collect information about your location by shouting or clapping and listening to the echoes? Would a large chamber sound different than a tight passage? Sound ridiculous? Try this experiment. … Continue reading An essay about caves and the origins of echolocation