This may be the first known example of mimicry where a mammal copies an insect.
“When you hear them, that’s what comes to your mind immediately,” says Russo, of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy.
The researchers caught more of the bats, recording their buzzing cries as they were being handled. The team also recorded the buzzing sounds of four stinging insect species commonly found in European forests. But audience matters. Tawny owls and barn owls commonly hunt bats, so Russo’s team wondered if the birds could be the target for the buzzing performance. When the researchers limited their sound analysis to just the frequencies that an owl hears, the buzzes became much harder to tell apart — particularly for comparisons involving the buzzing of European hornets have a taste for bats. But the buzzing call that some bats make when grasped may make the birds reconsider their meal.
This scenario may be the first known example of Batesian mimicry — acoustic or otherwise — where a mammal copies an insect, the researchers say.
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