Bat echolocation Escalation Bats do it Commentary

Donald Griffin, Robert Galambos acoustics

Bat echolocation

• Lazzaro Spallanzani showed
• that bats can navigate in the dark.
• Charles Jurine showed that they use their heads
• and respond to sounds that we cannot hear.
• Finally, Griffin and Galambos showed
• that bats emit ultrasound
• and that they map their surroundings
• by listening to the echos.

Escalation

• A bat constructs a mental 3-D map
• giving the location and path
• of a tiger moth in the night sky.
• The tiger moth produces a series
• of ultrasonic clicks specifically
• to jam the bat’s ability to locate it.

Bats do it

• Bats do it; birds do it; and most people can’t do it.
• Eagles see their prey from high in the sky.
• Pigeons feel magnetic direction as they fly.
• Dogs hear higher frequencies.
• Mantis shrimp have sixteen color reception cones,
• where we have only three.
• Snakes see in the dark with infrared vision.
• Bears smell their meals from eighteen miles away.
• Sharks see electric fields that living things create.
• Yet we feel somehow superior,
• somehow bigger stronger smarter more able
• and somewhat more knowing,
• I don’t know why.