Maria Sagot and Richard Stevens, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge recently correlated a lot of existing data about bats. Some bats, it seems, make their own shelters of leaves or other plant material under which to hang while they snooze during the day. Some shelters last longer than others, depending upon what kinds of plants grow in the places where the bats live. The scientists wanted to know, what kind of social bonds do these bats develop among them? The working theory was that flimsy shelters would correlate with poor social bonds.
In fact, they found exactly the opposite. Bats with sturdy houses tended to stick together less, and bats with more ad-hoc shelters displayed social bonds that were extremely strong. The Economist, reporting on this work, notes, "[as] in people, so in bats: adversity promotes solidarity."
This strikes at the heart of human instinct. Even in our sedentary, city-bound Western lifestyle, we still talk about our lives as if we are nomadic, although the span of time has replaced the physical path that was once laid in front of us. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Does some part of us suffer from too much comfort? Our distant ancestors walked endlessly back and forth across the African savannah, following game and avoiding predators. Our first shelters were flimsy huts that might have lasted a few weeks to a few months at most, and our tribes must have been very, very closely bonded.
Read more here: Bats building bonds via Economist.com
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