Social grooming among Indian short-nosed fruit bats

Videos
showing various aspects of social grooming.Social grooming is conspicuous in group-living mammals. Bats are gregarious and may groom each other, but the motivation for such social behaviour remains unclear. Here, we describe patterns and infer function of social grooming in tent-making Indian short-nosed fruit bats. Combining field and captivity observations, we found that males and their harem of females mutually groom and apply bodily secretions to one another in tight clusters. Mutual grooming is more commonly initiated by females, before emergence flight at dusk, and during the non-mating season. The within-harem association pattern suggests males may recognize female reproductive status via social grooming. Chemical analysis of the secretions applied during grooming revealed volatile organic compounds that may be involved in chemosensory-mediated communication and/or mate choice. These fruit bat harems were previously seen as simple aggregations, with limited interactions among individuals. Our findings suggest social grooming is multi-functional, with potential implications for the bats’ social lives.

本数据集展示了社会抚触的多个方面。社会抚触在群居哺乳动物中尤为显著。蝙蝠群居生活，彼此间可能进行抚触，但其社会行为背后的动机尚不明确。本研究描述了建造帐篷的印度短鼻果蝠社会抚触的模式及其功能推断。通过结合野外及圈养观察，我们发现雄性及其后宫中的雌性在紧密的群体中相互抚触并施加体液。相互抚触通常由雌性发起，尤其在黄昏起飞前及非交配季节。后宫内的关联模式暗示雄性可能通过社会抚触识别雌性的繁殖状态。对抚触过程中施加的体液进行化学分析，揭示了可能参与化学感官介导的通讯或配偶选择的挥发性有机化合物。这些果蝠后宫先前被视为简单的聚集，个体间的相互作用有限。我们的研究结果表明，社会抚触具有多功能性，对蝙蝠的社会生活可能具有深远的影响。