By Susan Milius
In a long-running war between bats and moths, at least one bat has gotten the upper wing.
Western barbastelle bats in Europe typically ping out their echolocation calls softly enough to locate a moth for dinner before the moth hears them coming, says Holger Goerlitz of the University of Bristol in England.
It’s the first documented case of a bat species outwitting its prey by quiet stealth, he and his colleagues say online in a Current Biology paper released August 19. The battle between bats and moths has become a classic system for studying the evolution of predators and their prey.