It turns out that leaf-nosed bats can even find insects that hide themselves from echolocation. In what’s known as acoustic camouflage, insects that sit motionless on leaves can be protected because the echo from the bat’s cry bounces off the leaf at the same angle as the bug, effectively masking the insect’s presence.

New research shows that the moths, Bertholdia trigona, have the ability to detect and jam bats’ biological sonar—the technique that allows bats to “see” through echolocation. “So if that were the case, at first, they’d ignore the clicks and capture the moth, but eventually they’d learn that it’s toxic, and avoid it.”

Echolocation (or sonar) systems of animals, like human radar systems, are susceptible to interference known as echolocation jamming or sonar jamming. Jamming can be purposeful or inadvertent, and can be caused by the echolocation system itself, other echolocating animals, prey, or humans. …

Echolocation–the active use of sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging) along with special morphological (physical features) and physiological adaptations–allows bats to “see” with sound. Most bats produce echolocation sounds by contracting their larynx (voice box).

Researchers discovered that a rainforest vine, pollinated by bats, has evolved dish-shaped leaves with such conspicuous echoes that nectar-feeding bats can find its flowers twice as fast by echolocation. …

Bats have a sophisticated echolocation system they use to hunt tiny insects and avoid collision. strand of fishing line with no trouble.

Bats produce “pings” or “clicks,” right? They make these high-pitched sounds, too high for us to hear, but when their cries ricochet off distant objects, the echoes tell them there’s a house over there, a tree in front of them, a moth flying over on the left. And so they “see” by echolocation. That’s their thing.

Most bat echolocation occurs beyond the range of human hearing. Some bat sounds humans can hear. The squeaks and squawks that bats make in their roosts or which occur between females and their pups can be detected by human ears, but these noises aren’t considered to be echolocation sounds.

Bats are not blind and can in fact see quite well using their eyes. While most bats do have advanced ears that give them a form of vision in the dark known as echolocation, these good ears does not require them to have bad eyes. Bats have both excellent hearing and good eyesight. …

Bats use echolocation to navigate and find food in the dark. Echolocation allows bats to find insects the size of mosquitoes, which many bats like to eat. Bats aren’t blind, but they can use echolocation to find their way around very quickly in total darkness.

Echolocation is a skill we usually associate with animals such as bats and whales, but some blind humans also use the echoes of their own sounds to detect obstacles and their outlines. Despite how useful this skill can be, very few blind people are currently taught how to do it.

Most bat echolocation occurs beyond the range of human hearing. Humans can hear from 20 Hz to 15-20 kHz depending on age. Bat calls can range from 9 kHz to to 200 kHz.

The finding that a species of tiger moth can jam the sonar of echolocating bats to avoid being eaten seems to be the “first conclusive evidence of sonar jamming in nature,” says Aaron Corcoran, a biology PhD student at Wake Forest University and the lead author of the paper reporting the discovery in today’s issue of Science.

Moths Use Sonar-Jamming Defense to Fend Off Hunting Bats. Some species of moths may have evolved a defensive ultrasonic clicking technique that can temporarily disrupt the echolocation signals of bats. Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter.

If this were the case, according to Corcoran, bats would not find the moths palatable or, if they were indeed tasty, they would quickly learn they’d been tricked. Either way, bats should start to ignore the moth’s unique ultrasonic clicks.