Turn Up Your Volume @TED #shorts

I want you to listen and try to guess who

or what this is.

(Chirping sound)

That was bat ultrasound,

recorded above your hearing range, but slowed down so you could hear.

So that was an advertisement call from the peak of the mating season.

Scientists can decode these calls,

so a sample bat to English translation would be,

"Pay attention.

I'm a Pipistrellus nathusii bat, specifically male.

My name is X.

I am landing here

and we share a common social identity

and common communication pool."

For a pickup line by a bat, not bad.

Scientists have recorded millions of bat vocalizations like this

and they've decoded many of them using AI.

And they've revealed that bats have dialects

that they pass down from one generation to the next,

and that baby bats learn to speak just like you did,

by listening to the adults around them

and babbling back until they speak adult bat.