Birds are the undisputed champions of epic travel, but they are not the only long-haul fliers. A handful of bats are known to travel thousands of kilometers in continental migrations across North America, Europe, and Africa. The behavior is rare and difficult to observe, which is why long-distance bat migration has remained an enigma.
Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) have studied 71 common noctule bats on their spring migration across the European continent, providing a leap in understanding this mysterious behavior. Ultra-lightweight, intelligent sensors attached to bats uncovered a strategy used by the tiny mammals for travel: they surf the warm fronts of storms to fly further with less energy. The study is published in Science.
“The sensor data is amazing,” says first author Edward Hurme, a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-AB and the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz. “We don’t just see the path that bats took, we also see what they experienced in the environment as they migrated. It’s this context that gives us insight into the crucial decisions that bats made during their costly and dangerous journeys.”
