Social facilitation in short-tailed fruit bats, Carollia perspicillata (Linnaeus)

What is it about?

Animals that live in groups can increase their chances of finding food if they can use information from other individuals. We used individually-marked short-tailed fruit bats (Carollia perspicillata) to find out if this species finds food more quickly when other bats are around, and if the bats find out information about food from each other. _x000D_ To do this, we tested five bats both alone and in a group of 25 bats. The bats had to find the only feeder with accessible food among many. The bats found the food faster, and were more likely to find it at all, when they were flying in a group than when alone._x000D_ We did not find evidence that the bats were learning about food location from each other, but they find food faster when other bats are merely present. _x000D_ We also found that the male bats found the food faster than females, and a few individual bats were the first ones to find the food most of the time, perhaps representing the "leaders" of the group._x000D_

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