Moths survive bat predation through acoustic camouflage fur

Date:  November 6, 2018

Source:  Acoustical Society of America

Moths are a mainstay food source for bats, which use echolocation (biological sonar) to hunt their prey. Scientists such as Thomas Neil, from the University of Bristol in the U.K., are studying how moths have evolved passive defenses over millions of years to resist their primary predators.

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First imagery from echolocation reveals new signals for hunting bats

Some elite hunting species can detect prey that is completely motionless

Date: September 1, 2015

Source: eLife

Summary: Scientists developed a new way to produce images from echolocation, uncovering a new set of cues available to bats and a new phenomenon of 'acoustic camouflage' available to prey.

The ability of some bats to spot motionless prey in the dark has baffled experts until now. By creating the first visual images from echolocation, researchers reveal we have been missing how bats sense their world.

Publishing in the journal eLife, scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the University of Bristol suggest that instead of searching for prey directly, bats intimately learn the layout of a home range -- down to the surface of individual leaves and stones. When one of these familiar leaves is covered by an insect, the normal echoes are interrupted and this "acoustic shadow" is a very strong signal to the hunting bat.

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