Echolocating bats rely on an innate speed-of-sound reference.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

School of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, 6997801 Tel Aviv, Israel;

Published: May 2021

AI Article Synopsis

  • Animals need to understand basic physical principles, like light refraction and gravity, to effectively hunt prey.
  • A study on bats showed that both young and adult bats couldn't adjust their perception when the speed of sound changed, indicating this understanding is likely innate rather than learned.
  • The findings suggest that bats perceive their environment in terms of time rather than distance, providing insights into how sensory perception evolves.

Article Abstract

Animals must encode fundamental physical relationships in their brains. A heron plunging its head underwater to skewer a fish must correct for light refraction, an archerfish shooting down an insect must "consider" gravity, and an echolocating bat that is attacking prey must account for the speed of sound in order to assess its distance. Do animals learn these relations or are they encoded innately and can they adjust them as adults are all open questions. We addressed this question by shifting the speed of sound and assessing the sensory behavior of a bat species that naturally experiences different speeds of sound. We found that both newborn pups and adults are unable to adjust to this shift, suggesting that the speed of sound is innately encoded in the bat brain. Moreover, our results suggest that bats encode the world in terms of time and do not translate time into distance. Our results shed light on the evolution of innate and flexible sensory perception.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8126842PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024352118DOI Listing

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