Small flying mammals would repeat vocalizations to learn the 'language' they will need in adulthood
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himSmall flying mammals would repeat vocalizations to learn the 'language' they will need in adulthood.
Bats develop their vocal skills by lalling in a similar way to human infants - a discovery that could open up new avenues for studying language development in mammals. There lallation it is a phenomenon that we can observe in very young children who are learning to speak: it is a question of repeating simple syllables (for example lalala or bababa) several times, not to communicate some thoughts but simply to develop the ability to articulate these sounds.
Even though there are millions of different evolutionary paths between humans and bats, it is surprising to see that such a similar practice leads to the same result, which is to learn a linguistic repertoire - he explains. Ahana Fernandez, co-author of the study.
Bats represent the earliest example of non-primate lallan mammals: like humans, these mammals also need to 'train' their language to have tight control over their vocal tract - on which their ability to perceive obstacles depends. and foraging for food, as well as communicating with their fellows during mating and breeding rituals.
To better understand how the language learning mechanism works in bat pups, the researchers observed and recorded 216 lallations of bats. 20 wild bats between Costa Rica and Panama: to capture the ultrasounds emitted by the animals they used special probes, with which they identified 25 different 'syllables' belonging to the vocal repertoire of adult animals. The collected sounds were then converted into spectrograms that show the tone and intensity of the sound over time: this allowed us to isolate eight main characteristics common also to the babbling of newborns - such as the repetition of syllables and the rhythm of the sound.
Surprisingly, both males and females of the species learned and reproduced the 'syllables' which they then put into use in adulthood: females, in particular, used sounds learned in childhood to choose mates.
The babbling process in bats was accidentally discovered 17 years ago by a German researcher who observed these mammals for a dissertation. However, until a few years ago scientists were skeptical and believed it was unlikely that these were real 'syllables' similar to those pronounced by human infants. Now this new study leaves no more doubts about the nature of this language learning process.
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Source: Science Magazine
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