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How Europe's largest bat catches and eats birds mid-air
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-europe-largest-birds-mid-air.htmlAarhus University
Maybe not a good read for our bird lovers!
After nearly 25 years of research, the mystery has finally been solved: Europe's largest bat doesn't just eat small birds—it hunts and captures them more than a kilometer above the ground. And it eats them without landing.
An international team of researchers has shed light on how Europe's largest bat hunts and consumes small birds. The results, now published in Science, make for fascinating reading—a story of nocturnal aerial acrobatics, pursuit and predation.
Every year, billions of songbirds migrate between their breeding grounds and wintering areas. Many species fly high and travel at night, partly to avoid daytime predators. But that doesn't make the journey risk-free; bats hunt at night.
. . .
"We know that songbirds perform wild evasive maneuvers such as loops and spirals to escape predators like hawks during the day—and they seem to use the same tactics against bats at night. It's fascinating that bats are not only able to catch them, but also to kill and eat them while flying. A bird like that weighs about half as much as the bat itself—it would be like me catching and eating a 35-kilo animal while jogging," says Assistant Professor Laura Stidsholt from the Department of Biology at Aarhus University.
. . .
An international team of researchers has shed light on how Europe's largest bat hunts and consumes small birds. The results, now published in Science, make for fascinating reading—a story of nocturnal aerial acrobatics, pursuit and predation.
Every year, billions of songbirds migrate between their breeding grounds and wintering areas. Many species fly high and travel at night, partly to avoid daytime predators. But that doesn't make the journey risk-free; bats hunt at night.
. . .
"We know that songbirds perform wild evasive maneuvers such as loops and spirals to escape predators like hawks during the day—and they seem to use the same tactics against bats at night. It's fascinating that bats are not only able to catch them, but also to kill and eat them while flying. A bird like that weighs about half as much as the bat itself—it would be like me catching and eating a 35-kilo animal while jogging," says Assistant Professor Laura Stidsholt from the Department of Biology at Aarhus University.
. . .