Hungry bats compete for prey by jamming sonar

[Judi Lynn]

Hungry bats compete for prey by jamming sonar

2 hours ago


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A composite picture of two Mexican free-tailed bats to illustrate how they would compete for prey
by jamming each other's sonar. A visual representation of the jamming call is shown.
Credit: Nickolay Hristov
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In their nightly forays, bats hunting for insects compete with as many as one million hungry roost-mates. A study published today in Science shows that Mexican free-tailed bats jam the sonar of competitors to gain advantage in aerial foraging contests.

Bats use echolocation, or biological sonar, to find and track insect prey in complete darkness. When a bat hears a competitor going in for the kill, it makes a specialized jamming call to prevent its competitor from making the catch. The bats often take turns jamming each other until one of them gives up.

The research was conducted by Aaron Corcoran, University of Maryland, and William Conner, professor of biology at Wake Forest University. Its primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.

"This is the first study to show that bats actively jam the echolocation of other bats, and it increases the number of known functions of bat sounds to three: echolocation, communication, and acoustic interference," Corcoran said.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-11-hungry-prey-sonar.html#jCp

[jtuck004]

1. "Mexican free-tailed bats jam the sonar of competitors < Please, I beg of you, do not let the

militias know about this. They will want to install a big net across the border...

On a more serious note - this is freakin' cool. Thank you.

And then I saw this...

"The bats often take turns jamming each other until one of them gives up. " - Not just dumb animals. This is how WE practice politics in 2014.