Odorant choice experiment of Tylonycteris Pachypus

Insectivorous bats are mostly amblyope, however, they have very strong
echolocation and olfactory systems. They use ultrasonic sounds to avoid
pray and to locate food; they use scent alone to discriminate between
colony and non-colony-mates, males and females and individuals of
different age. Previous studies show that olfactory cues serve an
important role in animal close-up recognition, however, there are still
many unknowns to be clarified. We designed three main experiments in order
to understand the role of olfactory cues in bat social communication.
These comprise the pup odorant choice experiment (POC), the colony-mate
odorant choice experiment (COC) and the gender odorant choice experiment
(GOC) which were all carried out on the lesser flat-headed bat,
Tylonycteris pachypus. Our results suggest that olfactory cues play an
important role in T. pachypus mother-pup, colony-mate and gender
recognition, however, the POC experiment shows that there was no
significant difference between a newborn and a weaning pup. In the COC
experiment, we found that bats were more attracted to colony-mates except
for subadults, whilst in the GOC experiment, female bats were more
attracted to female colony-mates. This is the first time that recognition
behaviour of bats has been studied in multiple aspects.