This species reveals human-like cognitive abilities

Do Egyptian fruit bats, a common species, possess complex cognitive abilities? Researchers from Tel Aviv University explored this question by observing the bats in the wild to answer a long-standing scientific query regarding their memory and planning.


Published in Current Biology, the study led by Professor Yossi Yovel and Dr. Lee Harten, along with their team, aimed to understand if these bats have episodic memory and long-term planning capabilities, traits often attributed only to humans.

To do this, researchers equipped the bats with small high-resolution GPS trackers, allowing them to follow the bats' routes and the fruit trees they visited. The results revealed astonishing behaviors indicating that the bats could remember the location and seasonality of fruit trees and estimate the time elapsed between visits.

The experiment showed that older bats could avoid trees that had stopped producing fruit, unlike younger bats who lacked this experience-acquired skill. This proves an episodic memory capability in bats.

The researchers also studied future-oriented behaviors. They observed that the bats planned their routes in advance, choosing specific trees and sometimes flying faster to reach distant destinations, thus demonstrating deferred gratification and long-term planning capabilities.


The first bats to leave the colony targeted sugar-rich fruits, while those departing later sought proteins, showing precise knowledge of available resources and sophisticated feeding strategies.

This study highlights the cognitive complexity of fruit bats and challenges the boundary between human and animal capabilities, suggesting that human cognitive skills may also be present in animals, albeit to varying degrees.