Short Wave - SURPRISE! It's A...Babbling Baby Bat?

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

A paper published recently in the journal Science finds similarities between the babbling of human infants and the babbling of the greater sac-winged bat (Saccopteryx bilineata) — a small species of bat that lives in Central and South America. As science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel reports, the researchers believe both bats and humans evolved babbling as a precursor to more complex vocal behavior like singing, or, in the case of people, talking.Wondering what similarities humans have to other animals? Email the human animals at [e-mail]. We might dig up some answers.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, shortwave producer Rebecca Ramirez in the house with science correspondent Jeff Brumfield. G.B. I hear you've got some cuteness for us today. Heck, yeah, I do. But first, I wanted to reach deep back into that brain of yours. And I wanted you to think back to baby Rebecca. Hmm. I mean, I'm not going to lie. It's basically you're asking for the exact same Rebecca. Just maybe a little shyer. Really? So you weren't very talkative when you were young? Well, I mean, I had a very rich internal life. But, no.

No, my brother, Matt, really did the babbling for the family. I think he said his first word at, like, six months. Do you remember what that was by any chance? I wasn't alive for it, but I hear it was McDonald's. That's a classic choice right there. Yeah, it's, you know, my middle older brother, he worked at McDonald's. So Matt would apparently be like, the Donald's. That's really cute.

But in the run-up to say McDonald's, your brother was doing a lot of warm-up. He was making noises and babbling. And a recent paper in science found similarities between the way babies and toddlers babble and the babbling of bats. Today on the show, how and why at least one species of bat. The sack-winged bat in Central and South America. And human babies babble. Plus some listener mail. You're listening to Shorewave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.

Okay, Jeff. So how did researchers even discover these sack-winged bats babble in the first place? Well, it was one scientist in particular named Miriam Knornschild at the Natural History Museum in Berlin. She first noticed what she thought sounded like babbling years ago. And Ahana Fernandez was Konornshield's Ph.G. student. When she heard the bats, she heard it too. This is crazy. This is amazing. It's so conspicuous. It's so loud. It's so long. And yes, I was also thinking about infants, human infants that babble.

And so where exactly does one go about here? about babble, Jeff. Yeah, Fernandez is now a postdoc at the museum, and she works in Central America, which is one place these bats live. So every morning she's in the field, she gets up before dawn. I pack all my equipment, and I walk into the dark forest. Amazing. What a life. She plops herself down under a tree or near an abandoned house where the bats like to hang out

and waits for the sun to rise. All the bats fly in from foraging, and then I'm sitting in front of the tree. of that tree or the house until the sun sets again. Recording the sounds of bats babbling. They babble sometimes for 40, 40 minutes. This babbling is unique. Other bat species don't do it. And after systematically studying the babbling,

they found eight similarities between bats and us people. I mean, eight, that's a solid number. So what are the similarities? Well, to start, human babies don't just make random noises. For example, in human infant babbling, they produce a syllable type, ba, ba, ba, ba, bah, bah, in a rhythmic way, and then switch to the next one, da, da, da, da. And that is the genuine sound of my daughter from a few years back.

Cute. And then here's a baby bat. Now, it's slowed down a little bit to hear it better, but you can definitely hear like there's sort of a repetition, and then they move on to something else. The grown-up bats eventually stitch those individual sounds into songs. Only the males do the singing, but the babbling is rhythmic and all the pups do it. Songs. I didn't actually know that. That's really cool.

Yeah, yeah. It's a unique feature of these bats. So what do other researchers make of this? Well, it's a good question. In fact, that turns out to be the exact question. I asked D. Kimbrough-Aller, a researcher at the University of Memphis. I think that one of the remarkable things here is just that the saccling bat and the human infant both babbles sort of constantly. He wasn't directly involved in the study. And he says there may be an evolutionary reason for all this babbling. Both bats and babies need their parents and crying, well, those of us who are parents know that gets old pretty quick, right?

So babbling might be another way to say, I'm here. I'm healthy. You know, remember me. and might need some food. And once babbling is off the ground, it can supply a foundation for the adult of vocal capabilities that can be used for something else. So in the case of these bats, babbling leads to singing, which is an important part of their courtship rituals.

And of course, in the case of humans, babbling eventually leads to public radio podcasting. Don't I know it? So any other particularly cool similarities you want to mention before we had to listen to meal? Well, I mean, a lot of them are pretty complicated sounding, things like syllable subset acquisition and syllable type emergence. But one thing I will say is that one of the really notable similarities is just how early babbling starts. So human infants, for a long time, people thought they just cried. But Aller told me now they're starting to realize when they actually sit there and watch the infants, they're doing a lot of babbling right from day one almost. And Bats are the same. There's early babbling. And so they think that's really fundamental. Huh. That is so cool, Jeff. Okay. Well, I guess now it's time for some listener mail. You ready? Oh, yeah. I'm always ready for some listener mail. This is from Diane from Kentucky, who writes about our last Bats episode.

Thanks for the super episode on Bats. I've always appreciated them, but was truly stunned to learn what amazing animals they are. It's such a great production and so informative. Oh, thank you. A couple of bats in my area, Louisville, Kentucky, have recently tested positive for rabies, so that hasn't helped their cause. But I really hope that people listen to things like this. And, you know, Jeff, I hope so, too. Oh, absolutely. Bats are pretty cool creatures. And anytime we cover them, it's a delight.

Totally. And we were so lucky to have Rasha Auretti, one of our former interns, report that episode. I just, I love them. We have a little ecosystem of short waivers, you know? Yeah. Which brings us to our next listener mail from Marion, who says, I just wanted to send a shout out to Viet Le. I hear his name at the end of almost every episode and wanted to let him know that his hard work has not gone unnoticed.

Yeah, shout out. It's going to be so pleased. Mm-hmm. I'm also curious about this person. Do they do any other work for NPR in front of a microphone? Hope you can help with an old lady's curiosity. Thanks. Well, thanks for noticing, Mary.

Mary, Viet is our senior editor. And he's very intentionally not in front of the mic or on social media, for that matter. Exactly. Very, very intentionally. But he is behind so many of the smartest decisions on this podcast, as is our other editor, Giselle Grayson. And we could not possibly overstate their importance or their brilliance. And so on that note, and that's our show.

Today's episode was produced by, wait a minute, by youth. You, Rebecca Ramirez? Yeah, I'm going to produce it. Oh, all right. Props to you, Rebecca Ramirez. Okay. It was edited by Jizel Grayson and fact-checked by Indy Kara. I'm Rebecca Ramirez.

And I'm Jeff Brumpfield. Thank you so much for listening to our Little Daily Science podcast, Shortwave, from NPR. Does it still count as babbling if you're 26 and just haven't had your coffee yet? It does in my world.