Rare bat recorded via artificial intelligence

The Kuhl's pipistrelle bat is native to the Mediterranean region, with only a handful of records in Britain. However, a bat detector set up in a private garden in West Sussex caught and logged over 50 audio recordings containing the social calls of this species. The bat detector was running as part of the Chichester Bat Recording Project, and the audio was uploaded to the BTO's Acoustic Pipeline along with the other recordings from the project. The Acoustic Pipeline automatically identified that these social calls were being emitted by a Kuhl's pipestrelle and flagged the recordings as being special and unusual for that location. "We started using the bat detector four years ago, leaving it overnight in the gardens of Society members and their friends and have been amazed by the number of bat records at every garden," say Ken and Linda Smith, co-ordinators of the bat recording project for Chichester Natural History Society.