This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkins.

Have you ever found yourself stuck in what felt like a never-ending game of stop copying

me, in which one person keeps repeating what the other one says? You probably figured

that the person parroting you was just trying to be annoying. But some critters might use

vocal mimicry to save their skins. In a recent study, researchers found that certain bats buzz

like bees, a sound that could discourage owls from eating them. The work appears in the

journal Current Biology.

The idea dates back to over two decades ago.

Danielo Russo is a professor of ecology at the University of Naples, Federico Segundo in Italy.

I was working for my PhD and I happened to capture Sangreta, Mausier, bats. When I took

these bats out of the net when I handled them, they invariably buzzed like wasps or hornets.

But what was the point of this unusual auditory outburst? Was it an involuntary squeak

of distress, a warning cry to fellow roost mates? Or maybe, Russo wondered, was it a clever

attempt to trick potential predators into thinking that they might want to back off if they

don't want to wind up with a face full of bee stings?

Of course, the idea was attractive, but it was not very easy to test. And it took me a

long time to design right experiments.

The first thing the researchers did was compare the sounds made by Mausier bats with those

made by hymenopterans, insects like bees and wasps.

So we recorded four species of sting in hymenopterans in the field, as well as these buzzing bats

in hand. And then we tested statistically whether these different bats could be similar

enough to fool a predator.

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