Bats are having their 15-minutes of fame this year because they are rumored to be the source of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Costa Rica is doing its part to add to the knowledge of this small mammal – a new one was recently discovered in Northwest Costa Rica, the Saccopteryx bilineata bat, native to the Talamanca Mountain Range. Bats themselves never suffer from viruses.
One of the amazing characteristics of this bat is that the males make their own perfume to attract a mate. The perfume recipe and the way it is mixed is enough to make a human lose their lunch, and the S. bilineata is the only known bat species to engage in this complex perfume ritual.

Each afternoon, the male bat makes up a fresh batch of this female-attracting scent, a process that lasts 30-60 minutes. The bat bends forward repeatedly, using its mouth to suck up a bit of urine that is then transferred to its wing sacs. It then bends forward again to press the small nipple-like glands under its chin against its penis to combine excretions from both to form the secret sauce of seduction, which is added to the wing sacs until they are full of bat perfume. Many bats have wing sacs, but S. bilineata is the only species known to engage in this complex form of perfumery.

These bats live in harems, one male with many females, controlling a territory of about two square meters. Males without their own harems loiter around the edges hoping to surreptitiously mate with a female while the harem king isn’t looking. At dawn, a male approaches a roosting female. He hovers over her while singing a courtship song, then opens his wing sacs and flaps his wings to blow his perfume all over her. Scientists describe the bat fragrance as “sweetish, with a touch of bitter almond”. S. bilineata bats have lots of sex.

In addition to the sexy bat perfume made by males, the females are also attracted to the male’s courtship songs, described by scientists as being “an uncommonly complex vocal repertoire, including echolocation pulses, barks, chatter, whistles, screeches, and territorial songs.” Each male has his own individual identifying trill, allowing females to find a favorite partner repeatedly.
Dr. Mirjam Knornschild (Germany) spent many months in Costa Rica audiotaping the S. bilineata bat, and concluded that these bats have their own language and dialects. They seem to be quite chatty, speaking mostly about food, sleep, sex, and other bats. Dr. Knornschild is a behavior ecologist at Natural History Museum of Berlin, and director of CULTSONG, which studies other chatty animals like great apes, whales and songbirds. Her team discovered that the S. bilineata females use a form of baby talk to communicate with their pups.

Dr. Knornschild hopes to return to Costa Rica for more bat research. She says, “The deeper we dig, the more interesting things we find.” It would be hard to find something more interesting than a sexy, singing, perfume-making bat

About the Author :