BABY bats babble just like human infants when learning to communicate, a new study has found. Scientists from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin eavesdropped on 20 baby bats — called pups — and found that, just like humans, they practice making noises before learning how to talk to others. The greater sac-winged (Saccopteryx bilineata) bat pups were observed in their natural habitats in Panama and Costa Rica. Researchers took daily audio and video recordings of the pups, tracking them from birth until weaning, which for most bats is around three months. Their lifespan is typically seven years. They found the male and female pups babbled daily for around seven weeks, with the “babbling bouts” of “long multisyllabic vocal sequences” lasting up to 43 minutes at a time. Human babies, the study authors said, babble to gain control over their tongue, lips and jaw and their vocal system. But babbling, or vocal imitation, they added, “is rare in the animal kingdom” and up to now had only been observed in songbirds — though only male songbirds engage in this behavior. This is the first time another mammal has been documented as using vocal practice behavior, they said, with both male and female bats engaging in babbling. The researchers took the recordings back to Germany to study them. They found interesting parallels between the characteristics of bat babbling and human babbling. The researchers said they hoped the findings would lead to more investigation into speech development in the human and animal kingdom and, ultimately, the evolutionary origin of human language. (SD-Agencies) | 