Tiger Moth (Bertholdia trigona ) make up to 450 ultrasonic clicks in a tenth of a second to jam bat's sonar and escape death. This discovery was made by Aaron Corcoran, a Wake Forest University graduate student, and William Conner, professor of biology at Wake Forest. High-speed infrared video cameras were used to record the interactions between predator and prey. The researchers also recorded the high-frequency sounds made by both the bats and the moths during each interaction.
The moth clicks back using a paired set of structures called "tymbals. This disrupt the bat's echolocation cycle. The researchers are yet to discover exactly how the jamming works.
Sonar jamming extends the defensive repertoire available to prey in the long-standing evolutionary arms race between bats and insects.
Details of the research appears in Science magazine
No comments:
Post a Comment