For more than 400 years, an oil painting titled Air by Flemish master Jan Brueghel the Elder has been hiding a scientific secret about bats and their nighttime feeding behavior – and we've only just spotted it. The painting depicts dozens of bat and bird species, but in amongst the menagerie is a recognizable noctule bat (of the genus Nyctalus ), holding a bird in its mouth. This is very unusual behavior for a bat, and it wasn't until 2025 that scientists confirmed that greater noctule bats (