Bats Growl At Each Others Like Death Metal Singers, Says Study

Bats use same vocal structures as death metal singers to greet each other, a new study has found. It has been carried out by researchers at the University of Southern Denmark who investigated the noise-making techniques of Daubenton's bat, found across Europe and Asia. Researchers already know that bats emit ultrasonic chirps to echolocate insects in the dark, but this is the first time that they have found them using ventricular folds. It is a thick structure that site just above the vocal cords and helps bats emit noise at low frequencies.

The study has been published in the journal PLOS Biology.

"Echolocating bats produce very diverse vocal signals for echolocation and social communication that span an impressive frequency range of 1 to 120 kHz or 7 octaves. This tremendous vocal range is unparalleled in mammalian sound production," the researchers have said in the study.

The research shows "that bats extend their lower vocal range by recruiting their ventricular folds - as in death metal growls - that vibrate at distinctly lower frequencies of 1 to 5 kHz for producing agonistic social calls", the scientists added.

The findings emerged by scientists who were studying how bats produce high frequency sounds for echolocation, according to The Guardian. They captured a high speed video of the bats' vocal cords in action and noticed that the ventricular folds vibrating at low frequencies.

"The only use in humans for these vocal folds is during death metal singing and Tuvan throat singing. The oscillations become very irregular, they become very rough, and that's what you get with death metal grunting," Professor Coen Elemans, who led the research at the University of Southern Denmark, told The Guardian.