Baby bats babble just like newborn human babes, a new study finds.If my brother and his wife discover their almost-seven-month-old daughter hanging upside-down from the ceiling, eating mosquitoes, and/or flapping about the house, another evolutionary fluke will have been discovered.
Babbling is thought to be a kind of vocal play that provides human infants a chance to train their vocal tract muscles in preparation for speech and to practice combining the syllables they will use as adults. Humans begin babbling at about 7 months of age.
Apart from a few other primates, like the pygmy marmoset, babbling has never been observed in any other mammals until now. However, certain species of songbirds are known to engage in a similar behavior, called "subsong."
Bats. Ugh. I was bitten by a bat once, and ever since then I do not register on film, CCD, or even in mirrors, which causes almost insurmountable problems (but not as many as you may think). Shaving requires a small army of portrait artists. Getting ready for a date requires an NEA grant. All I can say is, never trust an abstract expressionist. The time I hired Frank Frazetta was just weird.
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