Bats vibrate special vocal folds to produce low-pitched growls like those of death metal singers.
Bats are known for making high-pitched calls that they use for echolocation. But bats are also capable of producing extremely low-pitched growling sounds much like the snarling vocals of death metal singers — and now, scientists know how bats do it.
"What helps them growl are the ventricular folds, also called false vocal folds, that sit above the true vocal folds," he told Live Science. False vocal folds are thick folds of mucous membrane that appear in the larynxes of most mammals;"these vibrate at a comparatively low frequency and thus produce audible sounds ," Håkansson explained. Such sounds are hardly ever uttered by humans — except by trained Mongolian throat singers and, of course, death metal vocalists.
Some primates do have these larynx membranes, but humans are thought to have never developed them or lost them at some point in our evolutionary past, according to the study.
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