Pulse-echo interaction in free-flying horseshoe bats, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum nippon.
Because horseshoe bats emit a long-duration pulse, the returning echo temporally overlaps with the emitted pulse during echolocation. Here, the pulse-echo interaction that horseshoe bats actually experience during flight was examined using onboard telemetry sound recordings. Doppler-shifted returning echoes produced beats in the amplitude patterns of constant-frequency components. Bats shortened the pulse duration with target distance, but the overlap duration was at least 8 ms within the approach phase. The computations suggest that the phase difference in slowly amplitude-modulated sound (the beat signal) provides a useful cue for target localization.
Shiori
Yu
Y
Faculty of Engineering, Doshisha University, Kyotanabe, Japan. yu.shiori@jp.sony.com
Hiryu
Shizuko
S
Watanabe
Yu
Y
Riquimaroux
Hiroshi
H
Watanabe
Yoshiaki
Y
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000502:physiology*; D004455:Echolocation; D005426:Flight, Animal; D008297:Male; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D013686:Telemetry; D013997:Time Factors