Nature & Environment

Bats can use sonar jamming to steal food

By T.K. Randall
November 9, 2014 ·  9 comments

Competition for food can be fierce within large colonies of bats. Image Credit: Nick Hristov Bats have relatively poor eyesight, instead relying on echolocation to navigate, a technique that involves emitting ultrasonic sounds and then building up a picture from the returning echoes.

This ability enables them to hunt prey such as moths and other insects even in complete darkness, but where there are many bats competing for food within a small area this advantage can turn in to a weakness in favor of those who know how to exploit it.In a new study published in the journal Science, scientists discovered that Mexican free-tailed bats have the ability to disrupt the signals of a rival who is homing in on its prey. By sending out a well-timed counter call the bat can confuse its competitor and grab the insect for itself.

"It's a form of competition; make the other guy miss, and when he misses, you then go in and clean up and take the insect," said study co-author William Conner.

"It's the same solution that sonar and radar engineers came to for jamming sonar and radar for military purposes and the cool thing about it is, bats came up with this idea about 65 million years earlier than the engineers."

Source: LA Times | Comments (9)

Tags: Bats, Sonar