A recently published study acquainted 19 bats with a set of ringtones that caught their attention and trained them to associate flying toward one of the said tones with a reward, specifically a baitfish snack.
As indicated in a Phys.org report, frog-eating bats trained by the study authors to associate a phone ringtone with a delicious treat were able to remember what they were taught for up to hour years in the wild; the new study discovered.
Between one and four years after, eight of the said bats were recaptured and re-exposed to the ringtone associated with food.
All these bats flew toward the sound, while six flew to the speaker and grabbed the food treat. This meant that they expected to find food.
Control bats that did not have the previous training on the sounds were somewhat unmoved by the exposure to the tones not familiar to them.
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Long-Term Memory in Bats
According to the study's lead author and postdoctoral scholar in evolution, ecology, and organismal biology May Dixon, from The Ohio State University, she was surprised she went into this thinking that at least one year would be "a reasonable time for them to remember," given all the other things they need to know, not to mention, given that long-term memory does have real costs.
The lead author added, that four years strikes her as a long time to hold on to a sound that might never be heard again.
Dixon led this research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama while she was a graduate student at the Austin-based University of Texas.
Commenting on their study published in the Current Biology journal, Dixon said the past environment generations experienced can be very different from the environment an animal has been born into.
It may change throughout the life of an animal, as well; she also explained adding that trying to figure out the manner animals are using "learning and memory" is one way of figuring out how they are going to make it in a life filled with changes in the modern world.
Sounds Associated with Food Reward
In the study's initial phase, individual frog-eating bats captured for a series of cognition tests were exposed to a highly attractive sound in the laboratory-the male tungara frog's mating call, one of the bat species' preferred preys.
Flying towards that wound was associated with and slowly replaced by a ringtone, although the reward was the same.
Then, the study authors introduced three other ringtones, none of which was associated with a food reward. Bats were trained to determine differences and eventually no longer flew toward the unrewarded sounds.
An Ohio State News report said that each of the bats in the study could secure at least 40 snacks by flying to the trained ringtone over 11 to 27 days. All bats were microchipped and taken back to the wild.
Bats were trained to associate a phone ringtone with food -- and remembered four years later. @EEOB_OSU https://t.co/64nkoxZHOi
— Ohio State News – Research (@osuresearch) June 20, 2022
Bat Behavior
Beginning one year after, and for three additional years, Dixon captured bats and was able to identify eight from the first trial through their microchips.
In a follow-up investigation of their response to the original reward ringtone, all eight trained bats flew fast to the sound and could determine the difference between that ringtone and the new, steady one, although many of the bats did fly an unrewarded sound from the first training.
When 17 untrained bats got exposed to the said sounds, they mostly wiggled their ears in response to the sound, although they did not fly toward them.
Related information about frog-eating bats is shown on James Wolfe's YouTube video below:
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