Overview
- An international team tagged 14 greater noctule bats in southern Spain with mini sensor backpacks that recorded position, height, acceleration and audio, then analyzed roughly 600 chase recordings.
- Among 611 documented attack sequences, two involved high-altitude pursuits of birds and one was verified as a robin killed and consumed in flight, with 23 minutes of chewing sounds captured.
- Feather fragments bearing characteristic break patterns and bat DNA, together with on-bat audio, corroborated that the bats remove wings before eating to reduce drag and weight during flight.
- The bats climbed to several hundred meters and used rapid, loud, low‑frequency echolocation calls that passerine migrants cannot hear, then executed steep stoops while emitting continuous attack calls.
- Researchers and conservationists stress the species is rare and not a threat to songbird populations, urging protection of old‑growth roosts and attention to night‑sky predator–prey dynamics.