Bats are not as stereotyped when they hunt as previously believed. New research shows that these flying mammals are capable of making ultra-fast decisions about how to attack their prey -- or maybe even call off the attack. It takes only milliseconds. Bats use echolocation for orientation. They emit ultrasonic sounds, which hit potential prey nearby, sending an echo back to the bat. From this echo the bat can define where the prey is and attack it. A new study has examined how hunting bats react when approaching their prey. The study concludes that bats are capable of gathering information from the environment and process it surprisingly fast in order to determine how to carry out the attack or maybe call it off.

"A bat is capable of adjusting its attack until it is approximately 100 milliseconds away from its prey," explains Signe Brinkløv, postdoc at the Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark.

"It is surprising that they are so fast. Until now we thought that bats are deploying a kind of autopilot in the last phase of an attack limiting them to an unchangeable behavioral pattern."

Part of the research team are also Professor Annemarie Surlykke from University of Southern Denmark and colleagues from the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. The team studied hunting bats both in the laboratory and in nature. The study is published in the journal PNAS.