Bats and heavy metal singers have more in common than you might think

COPENHAGEN, Dec 2 — Bats have developed extraordinary abilities to survive. One of them is related to their communication system. These animals are much more chattier than previously thought — and even have a vocal range similar to that of heavy metal singers.

At least that’s what a study recently published in the journal PLOS Biology claims. Coen Elemans and his colleagues from the University of Southern Denmark explain that bats have a rich communication system. They have a vocal range of seven octaves, which is significantly higher than that of most mammals.

These nocturnal animals emit sounds to perceive their environment and find food in total darkness, but also to express themselves. All these calls vary between 1 and 120 kilohertz (kHz), which is extremely rare in the animal kingdom.

Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark have discovered that bats are able to produce such a wide range of sounds by using thick structures in their larynx, called ventricular folds. While watching time-lapse videos of the vocal cords of these small mammals in action, they noticed that these vocal folds allow them to produce grunts in extremely low frequencies.

While they’re unlike any other noise so far discovered in the animal realm, these low-pitched sounds are reminiscent of the sounds produced by some heavy metal singers, known as “death metal growls” or in guttural singing such as khoomei, originating in Mongolia and Siberia and known as Tuvan throat singing. “If you listen to a bat colony in the summer you can hear these calls very clearly,” Professor Coen Elemans told the Guardian. “We don’t know the function of the calls, but [bats] make them when they are annoyed with each other, and when they fly away or join a colony.”

Scientists hypothesise that bats produce such low-pitched vocalisations to distinguish them from the ultrasounds they emit to locate prey or find their way when they can’t rely on their sight. “We think the selection on these echolocation calls is so severe that in order for bats to have a range for communication, they needed to do something totally different,” Professor Coen Elemans told the British media. — ETX Studio