A researcher at Johns Hopkins University has noticed that the bats was working on with cocked their heads to the side, like a pug.

Melville J. Wohlgemuth, postdoctoral fellow in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, called it an adorable behavior. Seeing this, he become curious to know why they do so, the purpose.

Wohlgemuthsaid that he wanted to know when bats were indulging into such a move and why. He found that bats do so while targeting prey.

For an article to be published in open access journal PLOS Biology details, Wohlgemuth used high-tech recording devices and found that the fetching head waggles and ear wiggles of the bat synch with the sonar vocalizations of the animal to assist hunting. The discovery has shown how movement can boost signals used by senses such as sight and hearing, not only in bats, but also in cats, dogs and in fact in humans.

The use of echolocation by bats to find out, track and catch prey is well recorded. But main author Wohlgemuth and his team’s research has for the first time demonstrated how role played by relatively confusing head and ear movements in hunting.

They used a novel way to study the head waggles and ear movements of the huge brown bat, a prevalent bat species that in the wild looks for prey in both open and cluttered areas.

Initially, they taught bats to stay at one place on a platform while tracking moving prey. Once bats learnt it, the researchers fixed reflective markers to the top of the head and both ears of the bat. Through the markers, the team was able to precisely measure the head and ear positions when bats followed the worms going in different directions.

The researchers discovered that occurrence of the head waggles, nearly one per second, took place whenever the insect prey altered direction or started moving erratically.