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Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! And I hope everyone affected by Hurricane Dorian is safe!

Tiny tricolored bats who appear to be best friends. Now we wonder if they're syncing! Photo by Rich Sturges for The Save Lucy Campaign.

I found a really interesting article about bat brains to share with you this week. Recently researchers conducted an experiment pertaining to the research of bat brain waves. By putting wireless neural recording devices on bats’ heads, researchers were able to show that the bats’ brains sync up during social activities. Whenever bats were together, whether they were grooming, mating, or fighting, their brain waves matched. Researchers hope that the study will help show why people with social and neurological disorders have a hard time picking up on social cues.

When the bats were under observation, researchers were able to predict if the bats would directly interact with each other. They believe that the sync up is due to shared social experiences. If two bats are grooming, but in separate cages, then they don’t sync up. However, if three bats are in the same cage, but only two bats are grooming each other, all three sync up. Because bats are such social animals, they are the perfect models for social observations.  

If you want to learn more about this experiment you can read the article here.

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