A nose for the dark
6 Dec 2006 by Evoluted New Media
The intricate wrinkles and grooves around the nostrils of bats could help them “see” in the dark by focusing their sonar, scientists in China have found.
The intricate wrinkles and grooves around the nostrils of bats could help them “see” in the dark by focusing their sonar, scientists in China have found.
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| Elaborate nose wrinkles let many bats make the most of their sonar. |
Scientists have long speculated these noseleaves might help shape bat sonar and now the team from Shandong University have employed X-ray scans to simulate how the emitted ultrasound pulses interact with the bat.
They found that the noseleaves essentially help the bats make the most of the ultrasound they emit.
Research leader Rolf Müller explained: “For the bat, sound energy is like money to us - we usually only have a limited amount of it and we must make a choice on how to distribute it. The furrows help shape how the lower frequency sound ‘illuminates’ the environment, while the other frequencies remain untouched and thus able to scan the world in different ways,” he said.
Muller and his team hope that the discovery could help scientists improve sonar and radio technology.
