It is late at night, and we are silently watching a bat in a roost through a night-vision camera. From a nearby speaker comes a long, rattling trill. Cane toad’s rattling trill call. The bat briefly ...

A fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, approaches a Fitzinger's robber frog, Craugastor fitzingeri, in Panama. This species of bat eavesdrops on the mating calls that male frogs produce to attract ...

During Panama’s wet season, forests boom with a chorus of túngara frog mating calls as males compete for females’ attention.But these calls put the frogs in a precarious position between sex and death ...

A fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, approaches a Fitzinger's robber frog, Craugastor fitzingeri, in Panama. This species of bat eavesdrops on the mating calls that male frogs produce to attract ...

A frog-eating bat approaches a túngara frog, one of its preferred foods. Image credit: Grant Maslowski It is late at night, and we are silently watching a bat in a roost through a night-vision camera.

To source their food, some predators eavesdrop on calls emitted by prey. Fringe-lipped bats, which range from Panama to Brazil, are some of the most skilled eavesdroppers in the world. They are ...

A fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, responds to the calls of the túngara frog, Engystomops pustulosus, one of its preferred prey species. First, the bat hears the call of a single male túngara ...