Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren vogel Bomb. In today's episode is another classic
Speaker 1: from our archives. In this one, we get into the
Speaker 1: lifestyle of bats. Some of these animals find prey using sonar,
Speaker 1: which god us wondering whether they can jam each other's
Speaker 1: sonar and save more treats for themselves. Hey there, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb here. All creatures living in the wild
Speaker 1: will try to gain an advantage when it comes to
Speaker 1: finding their next meal. Some animals will use their size,
Speaker 1: big or small, while others rely on speed or the
Speaker 1: ability to make a threatening sound. But the bat has
Speaker 1: a different kind of trick up its sleeve or wing
Speaker 1: signal jamming. That's are nocturnal hunting mainly in the darkness
Speaker 1: of night. They eat prey that's tiny and quiet, like
Speaker 1: moths and other insects, which can be difficult to find
Speaker 1: in low light and darkness. Although the expression blind is
Speaker 1: a bat is widely used, bats are not blind. They
Speaker 1: just do use a means of locating these tiny tidbits
Speaker 1: of dinner other than site. When it's time to find food,
Speaker 1: bats emit a series of high pitched sounds into the
Speaker 1: darkness that bounce back when they hit an object. When
Speaker 1: a bat hears the echoing sound, it knows an object
Speaker 1: is nearby, and it flies closer to the source of
Speaker 1: the echo to send out more signals. As the echo
Speaker 1: back sound increases in intensity, the bat knows it's getting
Speaker 1: closer to the prey, and it keeps up this echolocation
Speaker 1: until it can swoop in for the kill. While primarily
Speaker 1: using sonar to find food, it turns out the bats
Speaker 1: can also use their sonar in a hostile and competitive way.
Speaker 1: Wake Forest University researcher William Connor and his University of
Speaker 1: Maryland colleague Aaron Corcoran used audio and video systems to
Speaker 1: observe the behavior of Mexican freetailed bats as they hunted
Speaker 1: for tiger moths, a favorite snack, but favorite snack of
Speaker 1: the bats, not the researchers. They found that the bats
Speaker 1: admitted a specific sound that was successful in interfering with
Speaker 1: the sonar of other prey seeking bats of the same species.
Speaker 1: They called this process sweep jamming. The study concludes that
Speaker 1: bats admit this sound intentionally to interfere with the sonar
Speaker 1: of food seeking competitors. When the researchers played back recordings
Speaker 1: of this jamming sound to other bats in search of insects.
Speaker 1: Those bats were also thrown off track. The sound made
Speaker 1: the bats eighty six percent more likely to miss their
Speaker 1: prey target. The scientists experimented with other sounds, like white noise,
Speaker 1: but those did not interfere with the bats sonar. In
Speaker 1: the natural world, sonar and echolocation aren't exclusive to bats.
Speaker 1: Mammals such as dolphins and other toothed whales also use
Speaker 1: it to find their way, and humans too have adapted
Speaker 1: technology to mimic this process. Ships regularly use sonar to
Speaker 1: help them navigate and to explore what's in the water
Speaker 1: under and around them. Sonar can indicate the presence of
Speaker 1: another ship, a dangerous obstacle, or aquatic life. In warfare,
Speaker 1: sonar can be life saving, cluing a ship in about
Speaker 1: the presence of a hostile submarine or an enemy torpedo.
Speaker 1: Technology can even jam the sonar of other ships, just
Speaker 1: like bats. There's no evidence yet that other animals that
Speaker 1: use echolocation for hunting employ signal jamming, but beats seemed
Speaker 1: to have perfected the process of jamming one another signals
Speaker 1: all in the search for a better meal. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Debbie Sponson and produced by Tristan McNeil
Speaker 1: and Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other not so baddy topics, is it how Stuff Works
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