For a long time, scientists attributed complex cognitive abilities like having episodic memories and planning ahead only to humans. A recent scientific study conducted by researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel shows that humans might not be as unique on this front as previously thought. Based on the experiment they conducted, the researchers concluded that fruit bats also possess these thinking abilities.
Rather than there being a huge cognitive gap between humans and animals, this study suggests that humans and different animal species exist on a spectrum where they display different levels of these abilities. How did the researchers discover that these bats have the same kinds of cognitive abilities as humans? Let’s fly into the intriguing world of fruit bats and see.
How Scientists Followed the Fruit Bats’ Flight
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According to Yossi Yovel, a professor at the School of Zoology at Tel Aviv University and one of the study’s leaders, previous scientific studies suggested that many animals have the same cognitive abilities as humans do. Most of these studies, however, were conducted in lab conditions since doing field studies with wild animals is more difficult to perform. Professor Yovel and his team wanted to test these abilities on wild animals, so they set up an experiment focusing on the colony of free-ranging Egyptian fruit bats based at the university’s I. Meier Segals Garden for Zoological Research.
When conducting this experiment, the team wanted to test whether these bats, who depend on fruit trees for their survival, could track the availability of fruit based on where the trees were located and when they bore fruit. They hypothesized that the bats would need to mentally track the resources on the numerous fruit and nectar trees in their environment so they could revisit them at the right times. To test their hypothesis, the scientists attached a tiny high-resolution GPS tracker to each bat, documented the bats’ navigational and foraging routines over several months, and then analyzed the large amount of data they gathered.
How The Bats Used Their Memories to Find Fruit
The researchers wanted to test whether the bats could tell that time had elapsed and certain trees had stopped bearing fruit. To do so, they prevented the bats from leaving the colony for certain periods ranging from one day to a week and then let the bats go to see how their methods for finding fruit would change. According to Dr. Lee Harten, another professor at the School of Zoology and the other leader of this study, the bats released after one day of captivity returned to the trees they visited on the previous night, while the bats released after a week of captivity avoided trees that had stopped bearing fruit during that time period.
Based on these observations, the researchers concluded that the bats created mental time maps that allowed them to determine how much time had passed since they last visited a certain tree and which trees to avoid since they were no longer bearing fruit or worth visiting. Furthermore, since older, experienced bats avoided the trees that weren’t bearing fruits while younger, inexperienced bats still visited those trees, the researchers concluded that fruit bats have to learn how to acquire this mental mapping skill.
How The Bats Planned Ahead to Get Their Nourishment
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The researchers also wanted to test whether the bats could plan ahead to find the right kind of nourishment. To do so, they observed what route each bat took and which tree they arrived at first after leaving their lairs. According to researcher Xing Chen, the bats often flew directly to a specific tree they already knew; if that tree was further away from their lair, they would fly faster to reach it. They would even avoid other fruit trees that they foraged the previous night, showing that they could delay gratification until they reached their preferred target.
The bats were also observed flying to different types of trees depending on when they left their lairs. Bats that flew out first chose trees that bore sweet, sugar-rich fruit; those that flew out later landed on trees that were richer in protein. The researchers concluded that the bats decided what trees to forage before they started flying and knew how to find exactly the nourishment they were looking for.
What The Study Says About Fruit Bats’ Cognitive Abilities
Based on the study’s findings, Professor Yovel stated that fruit bats exhibit “a complex decision-making process involving the three questions indicative of cognitive abilities: Where?…; When?…; and What?…” The bats based their decisions on where each tree was located, when each tree bore fruit, and what kind of nourishment (sugar or proteins) each tree provided.
The study shows that animals can show the same kinds of cognitive abilities that humans do; humans aren’t nearly as unique in that sense as previously thought. Instead, humans and animals exist on a spectrum of cognitive abilities, and any animal is potentially able to develop and act on complex thoughts.
Final Thoughts
Thanks to researchers at Tel Aviv University, we can better understand the kinds of mental feats fruit bats are capable of. Like humans, these bats can recall past memories, plan ahead, and delay gratification to find nourishment for their survival.
Instead of being unique in terms of their cognitive abilities, humans exist on a cognitive spectrum with other animals; rather than feeling deflated that we’re not as unique as we thought, we should be excited about this discovery. It shows our strong connections to other animals since we’re all able to think deeply about our situations and environments and act on those thoughts to get what we need.
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