Bats Exhibit Complex Social Memory, New Research Reveals

Researchers in Israel have discovered that bats can remember intricate social structures. They can identify friends and foes and recall their exact locations. This groundbreaking study, led by Professor Nachum Ulanovsky at the Weizmann Institute of Science, explores how bats encode social information in their brains.

The Study’s Methodology

Professor Ulanovsky and his team created a bat colony in the lab to mimic a natural cave environment. They used Egyptian fruit bats fitted with miniature wireless-electrophysiology backpacks to record brain activity during flight. Each bat was tagged and barcoded, allowing the researchers to track their movements and social interactions in 3D using video cameras.

Findings on Bat Social Interactions

The research focused on nerve cells in the hippocampus, a crucial brain region for memory and navigation. “Social interactions are being represented in the bats’ brains,” explained Professor Ulanovsky. The bats’ brains encode the sex of other bats, their social hierarchy, and whether they are friends or foes. This rich representation of social information is unprecedented.

These findings are the first to demonstrate such detailed social encoding in large, mixed-sex groups of wild, social animals. The study was presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum 2024.

Implications for Human Research

The structural similarities between bat and human hippocampi suggest that these findings could inform our understanding of human social memory and cognition. Professor Ulanovsky plans to extend his research to explore brain functions during natural behaviours. Although the current study does not focus on medical applications, understanding these basic functions could eventually shed light on conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“We’re trying to understand the basic functions,” said Ulanovsky. “But by understanding these in adults and ageing, we will also help illuminate related functions in humans.”