Bats Can See Into The Future With Their Sonar Capabilities: Here¡¯s How
No, we don¡¯t mean like those astrologer parrots. However, researchers have discovered that bats are able to see the future in one specific aspect -- finding where their food is going to be.
Some people find bats cute, some find them terrifying, however, one thing you cannot deny is how cool they are.
Even though bats are practically blind, they look for their prey using sonar. And now, new research has revealed that they can even predict the future.
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No, we don¡¯t mean like those astrologer parrots. However, researchers have discovered that bats are able to see the future in one specific aspect -- finding where their food is going to be.
Researchers (study published in PNAS) have discovered that bats are able to accurately triangulate where their prey is going to end up, with the help of predictive models that they¡¯re able to whip based on the echoes alone. What¡¯s more surprising is that bats are able to keep a track of the prey even when it hides behind a tree or a bush that could obstruct the sonar.
Cynthia F. Moss, the senior author of the study and a neuroscientist and professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences explained to Phys.org, ¡°Just the way a tennis player needs to find out when and where they will hit the ball, a bat needs to anticipate when and where it will make contact with the insect it's hunting.The insect is flying. The bat is also flying. In this very rapidly changing environment, if the bat were to just rely on the information it got from the most recent echo, it would miss the insect."
Merlin D. Tuttle/Science Source
Bats essentially look for delays in the echoes of their calls to understand how close or far the prey is. They tilt their head and ears in specific directions to get more accurate information. Researchers felt that this head tilting indicated it was lagging behind, however, they later discovered that that wasn¡¯t the case at all.
Angela Salles, another author of the study explained, "We hypothesized that bats use both the velocity information from the timing of the echoes and further adjust their head aim. When we tested this model with our data, we saw it fit very well."
Research into bat's sonar echo-location behaviour holds the key to developing technologies that may help visually impaired people better predict their immediate surroundings and navigate them, some experts believe.
