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Journal of the Acoustical Society of America / Volume 122 / Issue 6 / BIOACOUSTICS [80]

Flying big brown bats emit a beam with two lobes in the vertical plane

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 122, Issue 6, pp. 3717-3724 (2007); (8 pages)

Kaushik Ghose1, Cynthia F. Moss1, and Timothy K. Horiuchi2

1Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, Institute for Systems Research, Dept. of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
2Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, Institute for Systems Research, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

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The sonar beam of an echolocating bat forms a spatial window restricting the echo information returned from the environment. Investigating the shape and orientation of the sonar beam produced by a bat as it flies and performs various behavioral tasks may yield insight into the operation of its sonar system. This paper presents recordings of vertical and horizontal cross sections of the sonar beam produced by Eptesicus fuscus (big brown bats) as they fly and pursue prey in a laboratory flight room. In the horizontal plane the sonar beam consists of one large lobe and in the vertical plane the beam consists of two lobes of comparable size oriented frontally and ventrally. In level flight, the bat directs its beam such that the ventral lobe is pointed forward and down toward the ground ahead of its flight path. The bat may utilize the downward directed lobe to measure altitude without the need for vertical head movements.

© 2007 Acoustical Society of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the Knowles company for donating several samples of their FG3329 electret microphone, which were used to build the array used in the experiments. They thank Chen Chiu for help with some of the experiments. Thanks go to Murat Aytekin for suggesting inclusion of the field-of-view lines in the sequence plots to aid in their interpretation. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) P-30 Center Grant No. DC04664, NSF Grant No. IBN0111973 to C.F.M., NIH-NIBIB Grant No. 1 R01 EB004750-01 to T.K.H. and C.F.M. (as part of the NSF/NIH Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience Program), AFOSR Grant No. FA95500410130 to T.K.H. and the UMD-CP Psychology Dept. Jack Bartlett fellowship to K.G.

Article Outline

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. METHODS
    1. Behavioral experiments
    2. Computation of the sonar beam pattern
    3. Microphone array calibration
  3. RESULTS
    1. The sonar beam has a prominent notch in the dorso-ventral plane
    2. Control measurements
    3. The sonar beam may consist of two lobes arranged dorso-ventrally
  4. DISCUSSION

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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

aeroacoustics, bioacoustics, echo, mechanoception, sonar, zoology

PACS

  • 43.80.Ka

    Sound production by animals: mechanisms, characteristics, populations, biosonar

  • 43.66.Qp

    Localization of sound sources

  • 43.80.Lb

    Sound reception by animals: anatomy, physiology, auditory capacities, processing

ARTICLE DATA

History
Received 18 Jan 2007
Accepted 18 Sep 2007
Revised 12 Sep 2007
Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2799491

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0001-4966 (print)  

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef Acoustical Society of America

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