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Whilst watching a bat hunting on the wing at dusk (most likely was a species common to my urban UK location, e.g. pipistrelle) its flight pattern around the garden comprised circles, several metres in diameter, but I'm reasonably sure going in the same direction - in this case it seemed always to be turning to its left. (The circular flight pattern is something I've observed many times.) Is there any evidence in bats of a preferred direction of circular "sweep" whilst hunting? More generally, are bats known to exhibit left/right- handedness (or laterality in technical-speak) and does/could this manifest itself in flight patterns?

What I've already tried to answer my question:

Searched this site for related questions/answers + tried Internet searches with variations on circular flight for bats- results included a 2013 Nature paper, Bandyopadhyay, P., Leinhos, H. & Hellum, A. Handedness helps homing in swimming and flying animals. Sci Rep 3, 1128 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01128 - fascinating stuff re. handedness and advantages for homing, but the brown bat featured was trained and observed under controlled lab conditions. Hoped that someone here with knowledge of the subject could provide a research paper/book ref., etc. I posted this question out of simple curiosity - I'm not a biologist and so don't have institutional access to many papers (just the Abstracts).

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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to Biology.SE! Please take the tour and then go through the help pages starting with How to Ask questions effectively on this site and edit your question accordingly. In particular, we expect you to demonstrate that you have done some research on your own and then, informed by what you have learned, ask any questions you still have (ideally with references to reliable sources). ——— In this case, editing your question to include a summary of and reference (plus a functional link) to the paper you mentioned would make this much better. Thanks! 😊 $\endgroup$
    – tyersome
    Nov 7, 2020 at 22:38
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    $\begingroup$ @Jimbo, welcome to Bio.SE! I've edited your post to include the info from your comment -- thanks for the update! Could you please update the link to your Nature paper? It's broken. A citation would also be good to include to avoid broken links in the future. Interesting question -- thanks for asking. $\endgroup$
    – theforestecologist ♦
    Nov 8, 2020 at 4:18

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This article shows a lefthanded bias for climbing and eating, with one bat species:

Paolo Zucca, Alessandra Palladini, Luigi Baciadonna, Dino Scaravelli. "Handedness in the echolocating Schreiber's Long-Fingered Bat (Miniopterus schreibersii)" Behavioural Processes, Volume 84, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 693-695, ISSN 0376-6357, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.04.006.

  • Paywalled - only the abstract is visible.

Found using Google Scholar with search terms: handedness, microchiroptera

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    $\begingroup$ You could mention sci-hub as a way to bypass paywall. $\endgroup$
    – Rodrigo
    Nov 16, 2020 at 9:56
  • $\begingroup$ I hadn't seen this site before. I will have to seek advice as to where I stand legally. $\endgroup$
    – Polypipe Wrangler
    Nov 16, 2020 at 22:37

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