[HN Gopher] Study shows bats have acoustic cognitive maps
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Study shows bats have acoustic cognitive maps
Author : wglb
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-11-05 21:14 UTC (8 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| tiahura wrote:
| Isn't what we always thought?
|
| "The model revealed that bats tend to fly near environmental
| features with higher "echoic entropy"--areas that provide richer
| acoustic information."
|
| So, they recognize the sound of key reference points. This all
| seems rather intuitive and unremarkable?
| bbor wrote:
| Yeah it's intuitive, but it's the first confirmation of such a
| thing! Yay, science. They discuss the previously-plausible
| theory that echolocation provided local momentary info only,
| and didn't translate into long term spatial memories. A subtle
| distinction perhaps, but an important one if we want to get
| closer to knowing What It's Like To Be A Bat.
|
| Reading it brought me joy for no other reason than imagining
| researchers strapping blindfolds and nose plugs to "tiny" bats.
| Thank you for your service, bats
| sva_ wrote:
| I think it was known that echolocation is used for 'collision
| detection' and finding food, but not necessarily that bats
| could navigate long distances using echolocation alone. The
| editor's summary of the article is more clear imo:
|
| > Insectivorous bats are well known to use echolocation to
| catch prey and navigate around obstacles. It has also been
| shown that more visually guided fruit bats have spatial
| cognitive maps of their environment. Goldshtein et al. placed
| minuscule GPS trackers on tiny pipistrelle bats in conjunction
| with temporary blocks of vision and olfaction. The authors
| found that the bats could still navigate across kilometer
| scales using only echolocation. Thus, echolocation may not only
| allow for local navigation, but might also translate into an
| acoustic cognitive map of the environment that the animals can
| use to navigate over long distances. --Sacha Vignieri
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn6269
| guappa wrote:
| Well they do get home!
| sitkack wrote:
| That is how research works, and most often, it also finds
| interesting results in knowledge, future questions or new
| experimental techniques.
|
| I just discovered a stand of trees in a park near me that has a
| rich acoustic texture, if you clap your hands, the returned
| echo consists of multiple overlapping time shifted echos. Step
| 3m in either direction laterally and you can perceive the same
| echo but at an angle.
|
| Could make a really cool art+science installation where you
| could induce audio vertigo. Like
| https://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/tall-ship...
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| It seems the surprising part here is that the echolocation is
| still augmented by vision!
| zdw wrote:
| If you're interested in how different creatures perceive the
| world, the book "An Immense World" by Ed Yong covers a very wide
| range of sensory experiences including echolocation.
| msgilligan wrote:
| It's almost 40 years since it was published and almost as long
| since I read it, but The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins [1]
| has a chapter or section about echolocation in bats that I found
| fascinating.
|
| As I recall, it talks about how the scientists who discovered
| echolocation were initially laughed at (the greatest human
| engineers had just invented radar, how could the bats have
| evolved it?), how echolocation may have evolved stepwise, some of
| the specific physiological adaptions, and included some
| speculation about what kind of cognitive maps would be required
| within the bat's brain.
|
| I don't know how well the science in that section holds up 40
| years later, but it was beautifully written for the layman and
| was fairly high-level. If you're interested, I would definitely
| recommend taking a look.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker
| visarga wrote:
| One step closer to answering Nagel's question: "What Is It Like
| to Be a Bat?"
| bpshaver wrote:
| What makes you think that?
| niccl wrote:
| Not OP, but... It suggests that it's less different than one
| might have originally thought. Bats using echo location can
| build a persistent model of the environment, in just the way
| we can. I'd be prepared to bet a small amount that this gives
| bats the same illusion we have of moving in a static 3d
| space.
| the_arun wrote:
| This is mind blowing. There is so much to get mesmerized by
| Nature & other living beings.
| peppertree wrote:
| Bats be SLAM.
| bloopernova wrote:
| There are some people without sight who use clicks of their
| tongue to build a mental map of nearby objects.
|
| It would be fascinating to compare fMRI images of bats and humans
| performing a similar task. Not sure if that would qualify for an
| ignoble prize, but it'd be an interesting study to read!
|
| EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kish is who I am
| thinking of. I've tried it myself in a very dark room with a
| sleeping mask on: You can definitely hear differences, and with
| practice it might help you to navigate. I also became a lot more
| aware of air currents, and had to move slowly to prevent
| disrupting "useful" air movements.
| w-m wrote:
| Bat echolocation is a topic that's very personal to me. My
| grandpa worked as a researcher in telecommunications and
| fibreoptics in the 1970s, in East Germany (GDR). This being at
| the height of the cold war, it was completely prohibited to
| publish anything relevant to their actual work, so that the
| "class enemy" wouldn't be the wiser of what they were doing in
| the lab. When publishing anything, they had to water down the
| content so much that it became useless to anybody reading it.
| Also, publishing on data transmission with fibreoptics, while
| nobody in the country is able to get a telephone line in their
| homes, wasn't seen as helpful.
|
| It was sometimes possible to travel to western/international
| conferences - of course only after the Stasi gathered from
| interviews with all your colleagues and neighbors that you loved
| your children, and were likely to come back. And even then they
| were not allowed to make any contact with western scientists at
| the conferences, making any kind of useful exchange near-
| impossible.
|
| After finding and reading a book on Bionics, which was a bit of a
| hype topic at the time, he noticed that the biologists were
| talking about the inexplicable nature of bats' echolocation. As
| he had experience with code multiplexing, he wrote a paper on the
| signal theory behind that, in 1974 [0]. As this topic was
| considered completely harmless, it was no problem to get this
| published in the GDR. After a request, it was even published in a
| journal in West Germany. But then being invited to give a talk on
| it in Frankfurt/Main, the authorization was given three times by
| the institute, and then revoked again each time (by higher-
| ups/Stasi). He was then asked to cease any communication with
| West-German researchers (who had sent him a book manuscript to
| review). It was a bitter-sweet thing for him. In later years, he
| was often asked about bat echolocation, as it made for a good pop
| science topic. But of course he would have loved to publish, and
| exchange, on his actual research topics at the time much more.
|
| My grandpa died a couple of years ago. When I travel to
| international conferences now - being able to present whatever I
| like, talking to whoever I choose - this history often comes back
| to mind. Sometimes these stories feel like a very distant past.
| But then I read about how Linux maintainers are removed just for
| having a Russian email address, as happened recently. So maybe we
| haven't come as far as we think. I believe it's important to be
| conscious of the great freedoms most of us currently enjoy, how
| precious they are, and how brittle they can be.
|
| [0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00611870 -
| paywalled, unfortunately. And German!
| adrian_b wrote:
| Fortunately, Sci-Hub has it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I mean, it would be extremely surprising if they didn't
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