Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, their
Speaker 1: brain stuff Lauren Vogel bomb here. All creatures living in
Speaker 1: the wild will try to gain an advantage when it
Speaker 1: comes to finding their next meal. Some animals will use
Speaker 1: their size big or small, while others rely on speed
Speaker 1: or the ability to make a threatening sound. But the
Speaker 1: bat has a different kind of trick up its sleeve
Speaker 1: or wing signal jamming. That's are nocturnal hunting mainly in
Speaker 1: the darkness of night. They eat prey that's tiny and quiet,
Speaker 1: like moths and other insects, which can be difficult to
Speaker 1: find in low light and darkness. Although the expression blind
Speaker 1: is a bat is widely used, bats are not blind.
Speaker 1: They just use a means of locating these tiny tidbits
Speaker 1: of dinner other than sight. 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 increase as an intensity, the bat knows it's
Speaker 1: getting closer to the prey, and it keeps up this
Speaker 1: echolocation until it can swoop in for the kill. While
Speaker 1: primarily using sonar to find food, it turns out the
Speaker 1: bats can also use their sonar in a hostile and
Speaker 1: competitive way. Wake Forest University researcher William Connor and his
Speaker 1: University of Maryland colleague Aaron Corcoran used audio and video
Speaker 1: systems to observe the behavior of Mexican freetailed bats as
Speaker 1: they hunted for tiger moths, a favorite snack, but favorite
Speaker 1: snack of the bats not the researchers. They found that
Speaker 1: the bats emitted a specific sound that was successful in
Speaker 1: interfering with the sonar of other prey seeking bats of
Speaker 1: the same species. They called this process sweep jamming. The
Speaker 1: study concludes that bats admit this sound intentionally to interfere
Speaker 1: with the sonar of food seeking competitors. When the researchers
Speaker 1: played back recordings of this jamming sound to other bats
Speaker 1: in search of insects, those bats were also thrown off track.
Speaker 1: The sound made the bats sent more likely to miss
Speaker 1: their prey target. The scientists expire rented with other sounds,
Speaker 1: like white noise, but those did not interfere with the
Speaker 1: bats sonar. In the natural world, sonar and echolocation aren't
Speaker 1: exclusive to bats. Mammals such as dolphins and other toothed
Speaker 1: whales also use it to find their way, and humans
Speaker 1: too have adapted technology to mimic this process. Ships regularly
Speaker 1: use sonar to help them navigate and to explore what's
Speaker 1: in the water under and around them. Sonar can indicate
Speaker 1: the presence of another ship, a dangerous obstacle, or aquatic life.
Speaker 1: In warfare, sonar can be life saving, cluing a ship
Speaker 1: in about the presence of a hostile submarine or an
Speaker 1: enemy torpedo. Technology can even jam the sonar of other ships,
Speaker 1: just like bats. There's no evidence yet that other animals
Speaker 1: that use echolocation for hunting employ signal jamming, but bats
Speaker 1: seem 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 Swanson and produced by Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other jam and
Speaker 1: topics are visit our own planet how Stuff Works dot com.
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