Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Ford-supported Research Finds Friends Help Female Vampire Bats Cope with Loss
Female vampire bats form strong social bonds with their mothers and daughters as they groom and share regurgitated meals of blood. They also form friendships with less closely related bats. Gerry Carter, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and colleagues discovered that unrelated friends are important backup support when family members go missing.
When they remove a major food donor, like a mother or daughter, from a bat's social network, females who previously built up more friendships with non-relatives cope better with their loss. They score more food than do female bats who only invest in close kin. . .