A painted scene from 1611—Jan Brueghel the Elder’s “Air”—is being read as evidence that greater noctule bats (Nyctalus lasiopterus) have long hunted songbirds. Researchers say the artwork depicts a bat clamping a bird in its jaws, matching documented behavior
Last fall, researchers documented something many people probably never imagined looking up at: a greater noctule bat snatching songbirds out of the air.
Now, the story has found an older witness. In a 1611 Renaissance painting by the Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder, a greater noctule’s “birdnapping” appears to be hiding in plain sight.
The painting is “Air,” an allegorical work in which Brueghel depicts more than 60 different airborne species. In the upper right. researchers report June 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. one of the creatures appears to be a greater noctule bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus). In its tiny, oil-painted jaws, the bat holds a songbird.
The new identification didn’t come from a pre-planned search for wildlife realism. Pedro Romero-Vidal. an ecologist at Doñana Biological Station in Seville. Spain. had been working on a project identifying animals in historical paintings to see what clues they might offer about historical ecology. He expected to find the usual mix—artists using observation alongside artistic choices. But this painted bat surprised him. “I had never encountered a similar scene in any of the many paintings I had previously examined,” he says.
The painting’s layout adds to the sense of narrative. Urania, the Muse of astronomy, is surrounded by creatures of the air. Roman gods Apollo and Diana drive chariots of the sun and moon. Many of the birds perched and standing around Urania are easily recognizable. including parrots. swans. a turkey and even an ostrich.
Then come the bats. Researchers describe four creatures in the painting that appear to be bats, with the largest one in the upper right. It has reddish-brown fur, round ears and long wings, much like noctule bats. Its mouth is clamped firmly around a small body, with a feathered wing dangling below. Its size, Romero-Vidal says, suggests it’s probably a greater noctule bat rather than the smaller common noctule.
What makes this discovery hit harder is the timeline. Scientists have only directly documented bats snatching birds in the past year. but researchers have been publishing clues suggesting that the animals have counted avians in their diets since the early 2000s. says Ilias Foskolos. a bioacoustician at Aarhus University in Denmark who was not involved in the work.
Foskolos has recorded sounds of greater noctule bats catching, dismembering and eating songbirds. “It’s an intense event, let’s put it that way,” he says. He also says the birdnapping takes place at high altitudes—where a feathered wing dangling from a painting’s small jaws suddenly looks less like drama and more like documentation.
Still, evidence has to travel from the air down to something researchers can measure. Foskolos says that even if the hunting happens high overhead, proof eventually falls to earth. Researchers have identified telltale feathers from up to 31 songbird species in the excrement of greater noctule bats.
Brueghel may have been the key artist, but the bat’s geography closes the circle. Brueghel was a native of Brussels, but he visited Italy, where the greater noctule bat lives and hunts. And while Foskolos says that even at the time people “probably knew that they go for birds from their droppings. ” he frames the painting as an unusually specific visual match.
Romero-Vidal’s takeaway is about more than one bat in one painting. The finding shows that art can be a valuable source of natural history information, he says. He also cautions that “artists often exercised considerable artistic license.” The muse Urania. he notes. has yet to be spotted—whether with bats or otherwise. Even so, he says, artists can still preserve valuable observations about the natural world.
greater noctule bat Nyctalus lasiopterus songbirds birdnapping Renaissance painting Jan Brueghel the Elder Air Urania Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Pedro Romero-Vidal Doñana Biological Station Ilias Foskolos historical ecology bioacoustics