Human babies do it, bat babies do it, some whale babies and bird babies do it and there are quite a few other primate babies that babble. Maybe many more babble and we just haven‘t heard it yet.
I found this video online where one can hear “bat sounds, noises, screeches and calls, nature sounds and baby bats.” There’s no way I can distinguish the babbling from the non-babbling, but it all sounds wonderful to me.
Yes, babbling is indeed a wonderful thing, no matter which animal you are. In my breathing sessions I like to include babbling. Babbling tones the tongue, lips and vocal chords and it releases tension in the face. When I do physical exercise, even fairly gentle stretches, I often notice that there‘s tension in my face. I‘ve also noticed this in other people. Babbling helps, it gets the whole face moving, relaxes the jaw and supports the breath movement. Try holding your breath while you babble…
In my own breathing pattern, I tend to hold the exhale at the very end. Experimenting with babbling, I found that when I babble very softly and quietly, without any effort at all, I can let the exhale go, or rather, I stop doing something with my breath and the air simply flows out. From my own adult experience, babbling works wonders.
Babbling is not the only thing we humans have in common with bats, writes the team of bat enthusiasts of the surprising world of bats. In a playful and accessible way, their article on Baby bats gives insights into the world of the bat nursery and into life as a bat, from a bat‘s point of view.
„The story of how baby bats come into being is a strange one. Mating for northern hemisphere bats takes place during the summer months.
But a delay in fertilization or in embryo development during hibernation means the babies don’t get born until the following spring!
Like human babies, baby bats (also known as pups) feed on milk. And another thing that they’ve got in common is baby talk or babbling.
This is a pretty recent discovery (2006) and scientists think that this might be how pups learn the vocal patterns they’ll need later in life like mating calls.
Speaking of vocal patterns, pups make sure they’re not ignored by letting out high pitched squeaks. Each pup must have unique squeaks as their mums use them and their scent to identify their young.
When a bat is born, it’s furless and blind, but within a week, insectivorous bats have opened their eyes. They’ve started to grow fur and as long as conditions are right in the roost (e.g. warm enough temperatures), growth and development happen quickly.
An infant born in June can be almost ready to fend for itself by August. All throughout this time, the mother will feed it milk so finding enough food is vital. (It must be a relief when their young can finally get their own grub!)
Before this can happen though, the young bats need to go out with the rest of the roost. During this time, they perfect their flying and echolocation skills and also learn where roost sites and feeding areas are.
Insectivorous bats are usually ready to have babies of their own by the age of 2 although some take longer. This coupled with the low birth rate of most bat species (1 to 2 pups a year) could mean serious consequences for a bat population if babies don’t survive.
Bad weather, lack of food and roost disturbance or loss can all mean bad news. Another danger is that pups sometimes fall out of their roosts. If you come across a grounded one, you can find out what you can do to help it on the bat removal page.
Echolocation – A Way To See With Sound
Echolocation (also known as biosonar), is the way insect-eating bats use sound (in the same way that we use vision) to navigate their way around in the dark and find food.
Like the sound produced by a dog trainer when s/he blows a dog whistle, echolocation calls can’t usually be heard by humans.
It’s not that they can’t see, their night time vision is pretty good but this amazing ability gives them a degree of accuracy about their surroundings that we can’t get from just using our eyes. In fact, it’s so precise that they can detect and avoid objects as thin as a strand of hair!
SO HOW DOES IT ALL WORK?
I’ll let my friend Pip the Pipistrelle bat fill you in…
When the sun sets during the spring and summer months, I leave my roost in search of insects. I make a number of high frequency shouts every second and listen carefully to them as they return after bouncing off objects in my environment.
The closer and/or more solid an object is, the louder the echo and the quicker it’ll come back to me. And so a near by tree trunk will produce a louder echo than a paper bag that’s further away.
This is how I build a picture of where to fly and what to avoid.
Although my echolocation shouts are loud, you won’t be able to hear them without bat detectors because their main frequency (45 kHz) is outside the human hearing range (which is about 20 Hz to 20 kHz).
Some species like the Horseshoe bat, make the calls through their noses, but most others are like me and do it through their mouths. (Some bats just have to be different, eh).
Bats that echolocate through their noses tend to have a structure on their faces called a nose leaf. It’s thought that this helps to direct the echolocating calls.
CATCHING INSECTS
I detect moving objects like mosquitoes by making note of whether a particular echo comes from a different direction each time I receive it. The returned calls also tell me how big an object is. That’s pretty handy, I wouldn’t want to end up chasing a fox, thinking it was dinner!
The closer I get to, let’s say a mosquito, the faster and louder the echoes become until I gobble it up. If you listen to this on a bat detector, it can sound quite funny. A bit like someone blowing a raspberry 🙂
I’d like to catch a few more moths but they can hear my shouts and can avoid getting caught :-/ I sometimes wish I had bigger ears like the Brown long eared bat…
Their ear size means they can make quieter calls and still hear the echoes as they come back. Moths can’t hear these whispers and so end up being dinner (or breakfast depending on how you look at it).“