Evaluating odour and urinary sex preferences in the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus)

Olfactory cues provide detailed information to mammals regarding conspecifics. Bats may identify species, colony membership, and individuals using olfaction. Big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus (Palisot de Beauvois, 1796)) live in mixed-sex colonies and must differentiate between sexes to locate mates. We hypothesized that odour cues convey information about sex. In experiment 1, adult E. fuscus were recorded exploring a Y-maze that contained …