Study
Food sharing in vampire bats: reciprocal help predicts donations more than relatedness or harassment
Carter, Gerald G.; Wilkinson, Gerald S.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2013
Individual bats in a captive colony of known pedigree were fasted in turn and returned to the group, so that donations could be recorded with relatedness, prior giving and harassment all measured simultaneously.
- Studied in
- Desmodus rotundus
- Sample size
- 20 captive bats subjected to controlled fasting trials
How much a bat had previously donated to a given partner predicted how much it received from that partner far better than genetic relatedness did, and better than harassment by the hungry bat.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Reciprocity, not kin selection, is the dominant driver of blood sharing in this species.
How NatureHQ reads it
This is the study that turns a thirty-year-old suggestive field observation into a controlled result, by doing the one thing the field could not: choosing who goes hungry. It is worth noticing that the earlier paper was not wrong, merely unable to separate the explanations. That is a common shape in behavioural science and a good reason to be patient with contested findings rather than treating a single field study as either proof or failure.
- Captive colony; roost dynamics and predation pressure are absent.
- Twenty animals, with donation events concentrated among a few strong partnerships.
- Reciprocity here need not imply any bookkeeping by the bats — a simple bond-strength rule reproduces the pattern.
Choosing which bat goes hungry
Vampire bats share blood with roost-mates. Is that kinship, or is it repayment — and can the two be told apart?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: The Royal SocietyPublished by the Royal Society.
doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2573
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.