I was lucky enough to be in Austin, Texas during the Summer on three occasions and each time I saw hundreds of thousands of these bats waking up for the night and going out to look for a bite. During the day they slept under a bridge and at dusk they would start streaming out. It was an incredible sight. The sky would literally turn black with bats.

Obviously Texas is a great place to study bats and researchers at Texas A&M and the University of Texas, Austin have released the results of a new study that indicates bats sing “love songs”—a sort bat version of free jazz scat singing—to woo potential mates:

In the musical city of Austin, Texas, a group of smelly, pug-faced crooners is hoping to woo some females with surprisingly complex tunes.

That’s the finding of a new study of Brazilian free-tailed bats, which now join songbirds and whales as some of the only animals known to use a kind of musical language during courtship.

Also known as the Mexican free-tailed bat, the species is quite numerous in Austin and around the Texas A&M University football stadium in College Park.

Based on recordings of the animals from both locations, the researchers found that the bats’ songs contain definite phrases made up of birdlike chirps, buzzes, and trills.

Males sing their ballads as they hang upside down or sideways, sometimes flapping their wings and dripping a foul-smelling liquid that further attracts females.

Thanks Steve Silberman!