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Baby Bats Can Learn Different Dialects

Bats are sophisticated communicators. And not just when they’re in vampire¹ form. New research finds that Egyptian fruit bats actually have regional dialects, depending on the bat chatter² that surrounds them as they grow up. The study is in the journal PLOS Biology.蝙蝠是复杂的传播者，而不只是当他们在吸血时才沟通。新的研究发现，埃及果蝠实际上有自己的方言，这取决于它们长大后跟蝙蝠群的交流有关。 这项研究结果发表在“PLOS生物学”期刊上。

Among humans, one person’s howdy is another one’s g’day. Wild populations of bats also display group-specific vocalizations. But how do these vocal³ characteristics arise? Do they reflect innate⁴, genetic⁵ differences or are they learned? And if bat accents are acquired, who are these furry⁶ fliers imitating? Their parents? Or their roost-mates?

在人类中，一个人的热情是另一个人的天。蝙蝠的野生种群也显示着这种特定群体的发声。但是，这些声乐特征是如何产生的呢?他们是否反映了先天的遗传差异特性，或者他们学到了什么呢?如果蝙蝠的口音被获得到，那么这些毛茸茸的飞行员是在模仿谁呢?他们的父母吗?还是他们的同伴们?

To find out, Yossi Yovall at Tel Aviv University and his colleagues captured 15 pregnant fruit bats and divided them into three groups, each of which was housed in its own separate box. The mothers gave birth inside these boxes and their babies, called pups, lived there for a full year. During that time, the researchers exposed the pups to a select symphony of bat sounds. Fruit bats in the wild are reared in colonies that contain dozens to thousands of individuals, so they’re used to being surrounded by a cacophony⁷ of calls and other vocal communiques.

为了找到这个答案，特拉维夫大学的Yossi Yovall和他的同事们捕获了15只怀孕的果蝠，并将它们分成三组，每组分别安置在独立的盒子里。母亲果蝠在这些箱子里生了小果蝠，并在这里住了一整年。在那段时间里，研究人员将这些幼仔暴露在一些特定的蝙蝠声音中。在野外的果蝠在含有几十到几千个人的地域中饲养，所以他们习惯于被呼声和其他声音包围。

For one of the boxes, Yovall and his team exposed the young batlings to a selection of squeaks⁸ that were biased⁹ toward the higher frequencies. Pups in the second box heard lower-pitched peeps. And the third box got a random¹⁰ sampling of fruit bat hits that was heavy on the mid-range frequencies but also included those at either end of the aural¹¹ spectrum¹².“And what we found is that they were influenced by the playback that they heard.”Yossi Yovall.

对于其中的一个盒子，Yovall和他的团队将小果蝠暴露在一些较高频率的吱吱声中。在第二个箱子里的小果蝠听到低音。而第三个盒子在随机取样的果蝠中，在中频范围内很重，但也包括在听觉范围的两端。“我们发现，他们受到他们所听到的回放声的影响。” Yossi Yovall说。

“So the control group was using a vocal repertoire¹³ that was identical to their mothers and identical to fruit bats in the colony here in Israel. But the two manipulated groups were using different dialects...we actually were able to create three different groups of fruit bats with three different dialects in the lab.”

“所以对照组使用了一个和他们的母亲完全一样的声乐曲目，和以色列区域的果蝠相同。 但是，这两个被操纵的小组使用了不同的方言......实际上我们能够在实验室里用三种不同的组合方法创造出三组不同的方言。

Of course, birds are famous for their songs. Which the males learn from tutors, typically their dads. But Yovall says when it comes to vocal learning, bats march to a different drummer.

当然了，鸟儿以他们的歌闻名。雄鸟师从导师，通常是向他们的爸爸学习。但是Yovall说，当谈到人声学习时，蝙蝠可以学到不同的声音。

“Here we show that even though the pups were with their mothers, they were exposed to their mother’s normal repertoire, they were still influenced by the background vocalizations that they heard. Now this is probably extremely reasonable in the case of bats because bats roost in these caves with many hundreds of individuals…we believe that this process, which we call crowd vocal learning, because you learn from the entire crowd, is relevant for many other animals that live in crowded colonies.”

“在这里，我们表明，即使幼崽与他们的母亲接触到正常曲目，他们仍然受到他们听到的背景发声的影响。在蝙蝠的这种情况下，可能是非常合理的，因为蝙蝠在这些洞穴中栖息着......我们相信这个过程，我们称之为人群声乐学习，因为你从整个人群中学习，对许多其他动物也会出现类似情况”。

As the researchers note in their paper, this sort of social learning is sometimes called “culture.” Even if you’re living in a cave.

研究人员在他们的论文中指出，这种社会学习有时被称为“文化”，即使你生活在一个山洞里，也会受到文化的影响和熏陶。