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‘Unmasked’ bat foreplay: wrinkled-faced bats lower a fold of skin under the chin before having sex in a rare form of courtship
- Researchers found wrinkled-faced bats in the Costa Rican forest
- Experts were able to observe their bizarre mating ritual for the first time ever
- Found the male skin mask is lowered only immediately before sex
A hideous and elusive species of bat was first observed to mate in its natural habitat.
Researchers found wrinkled-faced bats in the Costa Rican forest and found that males congregate in large groups to fight each other for a mate.
To accompany this form of lek courtship, known to only be used by 12 species, bats also have a very unique aspect of their sexual escapades.
Males of the species have a fold of skin under the chin that covers the lower face like a mask. Only shortly before copulation is the mask left behind.
The wrinkled-faced Centurio senex bat males display a hairy crease that can be pulled up to cover the lower half of the face like a mask. It is lowered immediately before sex and rises again immediately after
Centurio senex is a wrinkled-faced bat found only in Mexico, Central America, and North South America.
But, until now, the species has rarely been studied, so little was known about its behavior and natural history.
In the new study, published in the journal PLOS One, the researchers were able to report the first observations of echolocation and mating behavior of C. senex.
They analyzed synchronized audio and video recordings of a colony of males located on 53 perches in Costa Rica over a period of six weeks.
In October 2018, researchers came across bats in the forest and anxiously recorded the little-known creatures.
They found the masked males perched next to each other in a relatively small area, hanging from trees and shrubs about 8 feet (2.35 meters) above the ground.
Each evening, the bats began occupying their perches at around 6pm. By midnight they were gone again.
On October 10, the team first recorded the mating of two wrinkled-faced bats.
“A woman obviously could no longer resist the seductive calls of one of the masked singers,” said Marco Tschapka, a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute at the University of Ulm.
“She joined the perched male and quickly went about their private affairs, thus confirming our idea that the males were there to attract the females.”
Over a six-week period, the team observed a total of 53 perches.
The largest number of bats present at any time was 30 in early October, then their numbers declined. By October 31, there were no more bats on the site.
Nomadic bats did not return to the area in subsequent years, depriving researchers of more opportunities to study the species.
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