Lunar phobic bats dodge the moonlight: study

Moonlight scares the bats into hiding in the shadows due to higher risk of predation and lack of feeding opportunities, it found.

Mexican scientists collated studies of bat behaviour from all over the world and analysed them for evidence of "lunar phobia" or "fear of the Moon".

Researchers found that the activity of bats in moonlit habitats decreased on bright nights compared with bats that live and forage in darker places, the 'BBC News' reported.

The study represents what scientists have called "the first reliable evaluation of the lunar phobia phenomenon".

It brought together a wide range of research concerning how these nocturnal animals behave and interact with the light of the Moon.

"Evidence that the activity of bats decreased with increasing intensity of moonlight was contradictory, so that's why we decided to conduct this research," said the study's lead author, Romeo Saldana-Vazquez, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"The effect of moonlight on the activity of bats had not been revised despite the existence of information accumulated over 20 years in different parts of the world," he said.

Analysing the data about 26 species from 11 studies, scientists modelled the activity of bats at different latitudes and in different habitats against the phases of the Moon.

They concluded that lunar phobia is "common among bats" and showed that the reduction in activity in moonlight differed depending on habitat type.

The findings are published in the journal 'Mammalian Biology'.