The spontaneous acquisition of speech by human infants (vocal learning) is considered a keystone of human language, but the ability to reproduce vocalizations acquired by hearing is not commonly described in other mammals. The recognition of vocal dialects among different populations can open a window on the vocal learning abilities of animals, but such findings in the wild may reflect genetic or ecological variations between groups rather than the learning of group-specific vocal behavior. This study by Prat et al. uses a playback-based lab experiment to induce vocal dialects in fruit bat pups; exposing groups of pups to different playbacks of conspecific calls allowed the authors to establish separate dialects, demonstrating the vocal learning skill of these bats. Furthermore, while songbirds, for instance, learn their songs directly from a specific tutor, the bats showed the ability to pick up vocal variations from the surrounding crowd, without direct interaction with any given tutor. The image shows a captive colony of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) in their day-time sleeping cluster.

Image Credit: Michal Samuni-Blank