Not Only You, But Also Bats Are Practicing Social Distancing, Too

As the coronavirus is spreading quickly across continents, it's evident that people should practice social distancing. Surprisingly, people are not actually the only species to do physical distancing. According to a new study from the University of Texas, the vampire bats are also practicing such behaviors as well.

Social beings

The bats live in a herd of hundreds to thousands. They normally socialize as a part of survival. Noticeably, the bats exercise reciprocal grooming as well as food sharing.

The question is what would happen to that social behavior when the bats become sick. The researchers from the University of Texas have monitored a colony of captive bats at the Research Institute of Smithsonian Tropical in Panama and studied if a few bats were made sick.

These bats were then injected with bacteria so that their energy got lower and lower for their activities. Researchers examined how the rest of healthy bats would respond to the ill bats. The result was that the sick bats still tried to connect with the healthy bats, but less in the social intensity.

Less grooming

Through the grooming habits of the bats, researchers found out more about the nature of their social bonding. The healthy bats are less frequently to be groomed by sick bats, making the sick bats have less favor from other bats in return.

For food sharing, sick bats will lick their mouths to show the healthy bats that they need food. In this case, it turns out that the healthy bats still “cared” and even fed the sick bats.

In fact, only the grooming behavior among the bats displays the change, showing that the other bats did not show their discrimination on the sick bats. They basically just performed less grooming. And this is a signal of social distancing.

As compared to humans' social distancing practices, it seems like there is no difference between the two species. Sebastian Stockmaier, a Ph.D. student from the University of Texas, mentioned that social distancing does not actually mean being totally isolated from society. The term still includes the meaning of being with your family but still practice some interactions to some extent. 

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