Pregnancy-related sensory deficits might impair foraging in echolocating bats - BMC Biology

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Sensory deficits related to pregnancy could impair foraging in echolocating bats, finds a study published in BMCBiology.

Little is known about the effects of pregnancy on sensing in mammals. In this study, we reveal an additional impact of gestation on echolocation in bats. Our findings suggest that pregnancy imposes a sensory cost that may negatively impact the bats’ foraging behavior. The deficits that we observed in sensing are mostly relevant for animals that rely on active sensing, which requires muscular activity such as sound emission.

], ensuring that they were not pregnant. Pregnant females were captured in April and underwent an ultrasound scan to validate their condition both upon arrival and prior to release.bats often give birth to twins, and within our group of six bats at least four of the females were pregnant with twins, as revealed in the ultrasound . During the experiment, one of the bats miscarried a single embryo, but we were unable to determine which bat it was.

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