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Echolocating bats can use acoustic landmarks for spatial orientation.

Marianne Egebjerg Jensen1, Cynthia F Moss, Annemarie Surlykke

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. mj@toender-gym.dk

The Journal of Experimental Biology
|December 13, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Echolocating bats, like Eptesicus fuscus, can learn to use acoustic landmarks for navigation. This study shows bats rely on sound cues for orientation when visual information is absent.

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Area of Science:

  • Animal behavior
  • Bioacoustics
  • Sensory ecology

Background:

  • Bats use echolocation for navigation and foraging in complex environments.
  • The role of acoustic landmarks in bat orientation remains largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if echolocating bats can learn to use an acoustic landmark for spatial orientation.
  • To determine how bats adapt their search behavior when acoustic cues are manipulated.

Main Methods:

  • Three Eptesicus fuscus bats were trained to navigate a mist net opening for a food reward.
  • Vocal behavior and flight paths were recorded using high-speed video for 3D reconstruction.
  • Experiments involved manipulating the spatial relationship between an acoustic landmark and the net opening.

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Main Results:

  • Bats quickly located the net opening when the acoustic landmark was consistently placed nearby.
  • When the landmark's position was decoupled from the opening, bats exhibited disorientation and collisions.
  • In the absence of the landmark, bats initially searched longer but eventually focused their search around the hole.

Conclusions:

  • Echolocating bats can learn to rely on acoustic landmarks for orientation in visually deprived environments.
  • This learning demonstrates a sophisticated integration of auditory cues for spatial navigation.
  • The findings provide novel insights into the sensory strategies employed by bats for environmental exploration.