Researchers at Tel Aviv University recorded 15,000 Egyptian fruit bat screeches into a machine learning algorithm that matched the bats' activities with the sounds they made. They learned that bats are just like people: their conversations consist primarily of arguments over food, power, sex, and territory.
They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close.
Image by Zoharby – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
