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People are encouraged to use social distancing to help slow the spread of Covid-19, and a recent study suggests that humans aren’t the only species to do so.
The study found that wild vampires socially distance themselves when sick.
Scientists had previously seen this behavior in laboratory conditions, but wanted to know if it occurred in nature.
The researchers captured 31 adult female vampire bats from a hollow tree in Lamanai, Belize. The team injected half the bats with lipopolysaccharide, a substance that challenges the immune system, to make them sick, while the other half received injections of saline.
The researchers then glued proximity sensors to the bats and returned them to their tree.
The team tracked the changes over time in the associations between the 16 sick bats and the 15 control bats.
The researchers found that animals that were sick spent less time around others, associated with fewer group mates, and were less socially connected to those that were healthy.
The study, published in Behavioral Ecology, found that in the six hours after injection, a sick bat was associated with four fewer associates on average than a bat that had been injected with saline.
On average, a control bat had a 49% chance of associating with each control bat, but only a 35% chance of associating with a sick bat.
They also found that these differences decreased after the first six hours and when the bats were sleeping or foraging outside.
Lead study author Simon Ripperger, from the Ohio State University department of ecology, evolution and organic biology, said: “The sensors gave us an amazing new window on how the social behavior of these bats changed hour after hour. even minute by minute during the course of day and night, even while hiding in the darkness of a hollow tree.
“We have gone from collecting data every day to every few seconds.”
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