The nocturnal creatures - the only mammals that are able to fly - keep family and friends close, a five-year study of over 20,000 roosting observations in Germany has concluded.
Their social structure is so strong it resembles that of elephants, dolphins, some carnivores and certain non-human primates including chimpanzees, all of whom can maintain enduring friendships.
Social structure: Like elephants, dolphins, some carnivores and certain non- human primates including chimpanzees, bats can maintain enduring friendships
Professor Gerald Kerth of Greifswald University, and a team of researchers said their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, provides new insights into complex animal societies.
They said: 'Our study reveals a multi-level social structure in wild bats, which resembles that of elephants, dolphins and some primates, including humans, who keep social relationships despite their regular splitting and merging into a variable number of groups.'
All the wild bats were marked with small microchips, allowing for the recording of their daily roosting behaviour with automatic data loggers.
This revealed surprisingly stable social sub-units in which both related and unrelated females formed long-term social bonds.
The researchers said: 'The observed multi-level bat society resembled that of elephants and some primates, raising questions about the link between social complexity and cognitive abilities.'
They said elephants, dolphins, as well as some carnivores and primates maintain social links despite their frequent splitting and merging in groups of variable composition, a phenomenon known as 'fission-fusion'.
Information on the dynamics of social links and interactions among individuals is of high importance to the understanding of the evolution of animal sociality - including that of humans - but detailed long-term data on such dynamics in wild mammals are scarce.
But their study of two bat colonies found individuals of different age, size, reproductive status and relatedness maintain long-term social relationships.
The researchers said: 'In the larger colony, we detected two stable sub-units, each comprising bats from several family lineages.
'Links between these sub-units were mainly maintained by older bats and persisted over all years. Moreover, we show that the full details of the social structure become apparent only when large datasets are used.'
They added that the stable multi-level social structures in bat colonies resemble that of elephants, dolphins and some primates.
The researchers said: 'Our findings thus may shed new light on the link between social complexity and social cognition in mammals.' ( dailymail.co.uk )
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