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# The Bat That Hunts Birds on the Wing
- URL: https://www.gottabekidding.me/the-bat-that-hunts-birds-on-the-wing/
- Published: 2026-11-05T11:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-05T11:01:59.000Z
- Description: A bat that normally eats insects went after birds bigger than itself. What it did with the ones it caught, the footage never showed.
- Author: Out of Bounds
- Tags: Nature

A bat swings in behind a songbird in the dark over northern Japan, closes the gap and takes it out of the air. Until this footage, nobody anywhere had filmed a bat doing that.

The hunter is *Nyctalus aviator*, a bat with a wingspan near 40 centimeters (about 16 inches) and a weight around 40 grams (about 1.4 ounces). Most of the identifiable birds it chased weighed 30 grams (about 1 ounce) or less.

Scientists already had a hint. Droppings from three temperate bat species that usually stick to insects showed small birds on the menu during certain seasons. The argument was over method. One camp said the bats picked birds off their roosts. The other said they hunted on the wing, and GPS tracking had been tilting the debate that way.

Dai Fukui, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, went to settle it with a group of bird experts in Aomori Prefecture over eight nights in October 2023\. The team swept the dark with searchlights and followed the bats with digital cameras.

They logged 56 chases. Bats made contact in 22 of them and finished the job six times. Japanese bush warblers topped the list of identified targets at 15, with black-faced buntings at nine and grey buntings at four. The bats also went after eyebrowed thrushes and Japanese green pigeons, birds bigger than the bats themselves. None of those pursuits got close enough to touch.

The footage ends at the catch. Where a bat eats a bird, how it handles the meal and how its echolocation, a kind of sonar, guides the hunt were left as open questions.

This bat normally lives on insects. Over Aomori in October, the menu ran to warblers and buntings.

**Read the full story at** [Science Japan, October 13, 2026](https://sj.jst.go.jp/news/202610/n1013-02p.html?ref=gottabekidding.me)

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**Hot Take:** Chasing pigeons bigger than you and never making contact isn't a hunting plan. Every coach has had that athlete. Nobody talks them out of it.