How to find the latest news on your meal or a mate? Use a cell-phone, if you are a techno type of bat! Social learning is something we all do and we also find it interesting in other animals. Foraging and mate-choice are the usual animal behaviours that utilise social cues. The social element at least makes sure that another individual finds the information useful.
Fringe-lipped bats,Trachops cirrhosis，从巴拿马的SoberanıA国家公园，在2011年被NET捕获（收集了18名男性），并在实验中以5x5x250万笼子进行了进食。一个观察者，叶子和一个避难所放在笼子里，适合蝙蝠。对蝙蝠的训练可以返回庇护所很简单，在他们有趣的冒险之后，所有这些都返回了他们的捕获地点，以便他们可以通过新技术传播毫无疑问的成功故事！
Prey cues were given to bats in, "training," using 2 cell-phone ringtones that were chosen to resemble the duration and frequency of the local tu´ngara frog,Physelaemus pustulosus。看来，这使他们更加自信，靠近新颖的猎物线索，这些提示总是给他们带来回报。个人可以在出现奖励时选择其他蝙蝠。
When you use energy and time in responding to a cue, lack of reward would mean a costly trip. This means attempted predation of the bat, use of limited energy resources or several other possible costs would create "dissatisfaction." In fact the bats were quite different in their response.
在巴拿马晚上从篮网中收集边缘口蝙蝠；学分：©T Schwietzer
In general, the bats approached novel cues and didn't mind where it was situated. Some bats did not fit this pattern, probably because of their experience previously in the wild. Males were often captured together, showing that they could have been interacting or transferring information in the wild. Communication could take place by sound (for example, the sound of chewing) or perhaps by smell, according to Patricia Jones, the lead author.
It comes down to a kind of culture that an animal species may pass on, whether to offspring only or throughout a population, depending on the group-size. The authors were keen to discover when such social information is used. The ringtones simply filled the need for a totally novel stimulus. This could be used by the bat's acoustic sense in the same way as any other new stimulus would be appreciated in the wild.
Patricia L. Jones, Michael J. Ryan, Victoria Flores and Rachel A. Page present their findings as, "When to approach novel prey cues? Social learning strategies in frog-eating bats," in theProceedings of the Royal Society B。With the cooperation of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, the work was carried out while they were based at the Universities of Texas and Chicago and at the Institute.
