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Echo-acoustic and optic flow interact in bats
- Source :
- Journal of Experimental Biology.
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- The Company of Biologists, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Echolocating bats are known to fly and forage in complete darkness using the echoes of their actively emitted calls to navigate and to detect prey. However, under dim light conditions many bats can also rely on vision. Many flying animals have been shown to navigate by optic flow information, and recently, bats were shown to exploit echo-acoustic flow to navigate through dark habitats. Here we show for the bat Phyllostomus discolor that in lighted habitats where self-motion induced optic flow is strong, optic and echo-acoustic flow interact in their efficiency to guide navigation. Echo-acoustic flow showed a surprisingly strong effect compared to optic flow. We thus demonstrate multimodal interaction between two far-ranging spatial senses, vision and echolocation, available in this combination almost exclusively for bats and toothed whales. Our results highlight the importance of merging information from different sensory systems in a sensory-specialist animal to successfully navigate and hunt under difficult conditions.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
0303 health sciences
biology
Physiology
Computer science
business.industry
030310 physiology
Echo (computing)
Human echolocation
Aquatic Science
biology.organism_classification
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Flow field
03 medical and health sciences
Insect Science
Animal Science and Zoology
Computer vision
Acoustic flow
Artificial intelligence
business
Phyllostomus discolor
Molecular Biology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14779145 and 00220949
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Experimental Biology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........3e4b711a1b2efb24fab3aa2999896a43
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.195404