Bird lovers can rest easy: their beloved feathered friends will not be dethroned anytime soon, when it comes to migration. While no one can rival the Arctic terns or sooty shearwaters, whose journeys can span 30,000 kilometers or more, an article published by a German team in the January 2 issue of Science serves as a reminder that other flying animals migrate, too. Even more impressively, to conserve energy, they can act as meteorologists and harness the wind.

The protagonist of this remarkable feat is a bat – a rather unique one, it must be said. Of the 1,400 species of Chiroptera identified worldwide, only thirty or so migrate, including six in Europe. Among them is the common noctule. Or more precisely, the female common noctule, as only the females take to the skies with the changing seasons. This is the result of a life cycle as consistent as it is astonishing: at the end of summer, they arrive at their wintering site. There, they mate, store the sperm in uterine pouches, and then... hibernate. In spring, they awaken and fertilize their gametes. They regain weight, leave the males behind, and migrate – pregnant – toward their summer roosts, where they give birth, raise their young, and prepare to begin the cycle anew.

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