Wild bats hunt insects faster under lit conditions by integrating acoustic and visual information.

ABSTRACT: Animals can improve their decision-making abilities by integrating information from multiple senses, which is especially beneficial when living in fluctuating environments. However, understanding how wild predators may use multimodal sensing when hunting prey in split-second interactions remains largely unexplored. As nocturnal hunters, bats rely on echolocation to navigate and to locate evasive prey, yet they have retained functional vision, despite the associated costs. We therefore hypothesized that bats use vision to enhance sensory redundancy when commuting and tracking small insects. To test this, we equipped 21 wild common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) with high-resolution light, sound, and motion sensor loggers and measured their echolocation and movements while commuting

SUBMITTER: Stidsholt L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12452927 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature