During a study with locked vampire bats at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, a young pup of a vampire bat was caught by an unrelated woman after the death of her mother. While this observation was not the first report of adoption in vampire bats, it is in a unique context with more than 100 days of surveillance photographs. This film captured by Ohio State University’s Gerry Carter STRI research lab reveals intimate details of the changing social relationships between the mother, the puppy and the adoptive mother over time. in captivity.
“The adoption happened after a very tragic but ultimately serendipitous event,” said Imran Razik, then a short-time man at STRI and a doctoral student at Ohio State University. “We realized that after the mother died and the other woman stepped in to catch the baby, we had recorded the complete social history of these two adult female bats who met for the first time in captivity. The relationship They have developed a strong breeding ground and this adoption may have been driven by the sharing of food together. “
To learn more about how vampire bats form social bonds, researchers at Carter’s lab captured vampire bats from three sites across Panama. These sites were all very far apart, as bats from different sites were unconnected and had never met before. Their new home, a cage covered with black mesh clothing, was equipped with three infrared surveillance cameras that each would record approximately six hours of photographs per day for four months.
Based on the films, alien bats first began to form new social bonds, which are best explained by breeding and sharing food. Looking after others is common, but food sharing is just as common, especially among strangers.
Vampire bats need to eat frequently to survive – usually every night. If a bat cannot find blood food, it may receive recurrent blood from a close social partner.
“To some extent, we were trying to see if we could influence partner choice between bats by manipulating whether they could share food,” Razik said. “We wanted to see how those grooming and food sharing relationships formed, so we kept track of all the grooming and food sharing interactions on the video recordings.”
When their bat mother, Lilith, died unexpectedly and her 19-day-old pup was adopted by another woman, BD, the research team continued with their observations.
“Shortly before Lilith died, I noticed that the puppy would occasionally climb to BD, and I believe this may have triggered a blockage of neuroendocrine machinery that caused BD to start lactating,” he said. Razik. BD was not pregnant and did not have a puppy of her own, but Razik found that she was lactating the day Lilith died. After Lilith’s death, in addition to nursing, BD seemed to breed and share food with the puppy more than any other woman in the colony.
A German researcher in the 1970s saw the adoption of vampire bats several times in his captive colony, so this discovery was not new. However, before leaving Panama, Razik took a tour of the vampire bat project to one of STRI’s leading scientists emerita, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, and mentioned that it would be interesting to continue the relationships between their mother , the pup and the adoption. Carter and Rachel Page, STRI staff scientist and head of Batlab in Gamboa, Panama, agreed that it would be worth taking a closer look at the relationships between these bats.
When Razik reviewed the videos after the test ended, it not only turned out that BD and Lilith had been major marriage partners, but BD was also a major player. Lilith food donor. However, Lilith did not appear to share food with BD. In addition, the data confirmed Razik ‘s first impression – BD helped the puppy at much higher rates than any other female.
“Another interesting finding is that BD and another bat, called BSCS, both of which had previously been in captivity, were the two bats that bred the largest pup,” Razik said. “Now we question whether some kind of experience in captivity encourages individuals to invest in other bats at higher rates or to adopt orphaned puppies in dire need.”
“Compared to other bats, vampires make amazing baby throws,” Page said. “And we still don’t know if, or how often, adoption can happen in the country. But this was a wonderful opportunity to better understand what relationships can lead to adoption. “
“An adoption study could give us an insight into what immediate features in the brain or environment influence parental care decisions,” said Carter. “As a new parent myself, I have come to to understand the full power of baby cuteness! I feel like my brain is completely rejuvenated. Most of us understand the strong desire to embrace and care for a cute puppy or kitten, or to take ultimate responsibility for adoption. Whatever the reason for these symptoms, it is interesting to consider the neuroendocrine mechanisms they contain, the stimuli that stimulate them, how they differ across species or individuals and how these signals may be precursors for other types of collaboration. “
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This work was published in Royal Society Open Science.
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