11 Facts About Animal echolocation

Term Animal echolocation was coined in 1938 by the American zoologist Donald Griffin, who, with Robert Galambos, first demonstrated the phenomenon in bats.

Unlike some human-made sonars that rely on many extremely narrow beams and many receivers to localize a target, animal echolocation has only one transmitter and two receivers positioned slightly apart.

At the most basic level, Animal echolocation is based on the neural anatomy of auditory brain circuitry.

The first suggests that laryngeal Animal echolocation evolved twice, or more, in Chiroptera, at least once in the Yangochiroptera and at least once in the horseshoe bats .

The second proposes that laryngeal Animal echolocation had a single origin in Chiroptera, was lost in the family Pteropodidae.

However Animal echolocation calls are not always species specific and some bats overlap in the type of calls they use so recordings of Animal echolocation calls cannot be used to identify all bats.

Coherence means that the phase of the Animal echolocation signals is used by the bats, while cross-correlation just implies that the outgoing signal is compared with the returning echoes in a running process.

Additionally, the characteristics of an Animal echolocation call are adapted to the particular environment, hunting behavior, and food source of the particular bat.

However, this adaptation of Animal echolocation calls to ecological factors is constrained by the phylogenetic relationship of the bats, leading to a process known as descent with modification, and resulting in the diversity of the Chiroptera today.

Bats use Animal echolocation to orient themselves and to locate objects, their auditory systems are adapted for this purpose, highly specialized for sensing and interpreting the stereotyped Animal echolocation calls characteristic of their own species.

The first episode of acceleration is connected to odontocete divergence, when Animal echolocation first developed, and the second occurs with the increase in Animal echolocation frequency seen in the family Delphinioidae.