Echolocating Bats Rely on an Innate Speed-of-sound Reference

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2021 May 4

PMID 33941702

Citations 4

Authors

Eran Amichai

Yossi Yovel

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Animals must encode fundamental physical relationships in their brains. A heron plunging its head underwater to skewer a fish must correct for light refraction, an archerfish shooting down an insect must "consider" gravity, and an echolocating bat that is attacking prey must account for the speed of sound in order to assess its distance. Do animals learn these relations or are they encoded innately and can they adjust them as adults are all open questions. We addressed this question by shifting the speed of sound and assessing the sensory behavior of a bat species that naturally experiences different speeds of sound. We found that both newborn pups and adults are unable to adjust to this shift, suggesting that the speed of sound is innately encoded in the bat brain. Moreover, our results suggest that bats encode the world in terms of time and do not translate time into distance. Our results shed light on the evolution of innate and flexible sensory perception.

Citing Articles

Realizing the gravity of the simulation: adaptation to simulated hypogravity leads to altered predictive control.

Rock C, Kwak S, Luo A, Yang X, Yun K, Chang Y Front Physiol. 2024; 15:1397016.

PMID: 38854629 PMC: 11157081. DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2024.1397016.

Ventral wing hairs provide tactile feedback for aerial prey capture in the big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus.

Boublil B, Yu C, Shewmaker G, Sterbing S, Moss C J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2023; 210(5):761-770.

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Hearing, echolocation, and beam steering from day 0 in tongue-clicking bats.

Smarsh G, Tarnovsky Y, Yovel Y Proc Biol Sci. 2021; 288(1961):20211714.

PMID: 34702074 PMC: 8548796. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1714.

Adaptive learning and recall of motor-sensory sequences in adult echolocating bats.

Taub M, Yovel Y BMC Biol. 2021; 19(1):164.

PMID: 34412628 PMC: 8377959. DOI: 10.1186/s12915-021-01099-w.

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