Do Bats Use Sonar

Discovering sonar in bats.

Do bats use sonar. Here s how just a few species of bat use their senses in different ways. Many species of bat use echolocation but they don t all employ it in the same way. And some bats don t use sonar at all. In fact it works just like one.

Called echolocation a bat s bio sonar is a high frequency system akin to a man made sonar. They found that the bats emitted a specific sound that was successful in interfering with the sonar of other prey seeking. Returning echoes are used by bats when they make calls to create a sonic guide for their immediate surrounding and its inhabitants. While primarily using sonar to find food bats can also use their sonar in a hostile and competitive way according to research from 2014.

In the seven decades since an undergraduate from harvard coined the term echolocation bats have inspired the development of man made sonar systems that can locate mines and underwater hazards pinpoint shoals of fish for commercial. Sonar may also refer to the man made technology that uses instruments to emit sound and. They are the second largest order of mammals after rodents with over 1 200 species identified to date that s about 20 percent of all mammal species. Sonar or bio sonar is a method of echolocation used in air or water by animals such as whales or bats.

By mary bates ph d. Bats have a variety of unique tactics for sensing their environments. Wake forest university researcher william conner and university of maryland colleague aaron corcoran used audio and video systems to observe the behavior of mexican free tailed bats as they hunted for tiger moths a favorite snack. There s an incredible amount of diversity within this group as a whole.