High-pitched sounds quickly lose energy in air, so bats must scream to make calls that are strong enough to return audible echoes. The basic process seems straightforward, but its details are extraordinary. Join us: Ed Yong and Clint Smith in conversation at Sixth and I A bat says “Marco,” and its surroundings can’t help but say “Polo.” Echolocation is a way of tricking your surroundings into revealing themselves. By contrast, an echolocating bat creates the stimulus that it later detects. Eyes scan, noses sniff, and fingers press, but these sense organs are always picking up stimuli that already exist in the wider world. Echolocation differs from human senses because it involves putting energy into the environment. Only two animal groups are known to have perfected the ability: toothed whales (such as dolphins, orcas, and sperm whales) and bats. Bats, however, can hear ultrasound, and by listening for the returning echoes, they can detect and locate objects around them.Įcholocation is the primary means through which most bats navigate and hunt. The bat is unleashing a stream of short, ultrasonic pulses from its mouth, which are too high-pitched for me to hear. This isn’t an aggressive display it only looks like one. I watch as the team examines another bat, which opens its mouth and exposes its surprisingly long teeth. It crawls upward and takes off, carrying $175 worth of radio equipment into the woods. After a few minutes, Cole places the bat on the trunk of the nearest tree. “It’s a little bit of an art project, the tagging of a bat,” Barber tells me. Once satisfied, Cole daubs a spot of surgical cement between its shoulder blades and attaches the tiny device. He frees a bat, and Hunter Cole, one of his students, carefully examines it to check that it’s healthy and heavy enough to carry a tag. A few become entangled in the large net Barber has strung between two trees. View Moreįrom inside the Shiterator, I can hear the chirps of other roosting bats. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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