Bats have recently joined elephants, dolphins and some carnivores and primates in maintaining long-term social relationships such as friendships, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. “Our study shows that animals with a peanut-sized brain, like these bats, can also have stable long-term relationships,” says study co-author Professor Gerald Kerth of the University of Greifswald in Germany. The study may shed light on the link between complex social groups and social cognition – the ability to learn about others within a group – in mammals. The study mentions that despite the bats frequent splitting and merging, bat groups of variable compositions are able to form complex relations with other bats. Over the course of five years work and studying 20,500 individual bats, the study shows bats are able to maintain long-term social relationships. The study says that despite the fact that the scientific world doesn't know much about the social and cognitive abilities of bats, studying their social networking might shed more light on how social complexity and dynamics could have an effect on behavior and social cognitive abilities in mammals, which allows mammals to recognize each other in the group. The team studied two colonies, mostly inhabited by females as male bats are solitary. The team monitored the bats with microchips implanted in the first year of life, and a sample of wing tissue was collected for genetic identification. The team added that “how complex social systems function is a key question in biology, economics and social sciences.” The study showed individual bats of different age, size and families maintain long-term relationships, adding to that they found that the social structures between the two colonies differed. The elder bats in the group are mostly responsible for maintaining social links among the same group. The study found that bats break-up colonies into communities of 20 individuals. The team reported that this divide might be because of restrictions in their cognitive abilities, and to also keep the number of social links inside a range where collaboration still works between members of the same group. BM
