31 July 2009

Sonar Jamming Tiger Moths

I just found out the neatest thing about moths and bats. Bats, we all know, use sonar to detect their dinner in-flight, in much the same way that submarines detect target ships or airport radars detect incoming planes.

What's super nifty in this article I just read in Science is that several kinds of moths use countermeasures to jam the bats' sonar signals. How cool is that? Who knew that there was this whole sonar battle going on over our heads in the dusky skies? It's a neat little piece of natural technology. (Thanks to Britannica for the image.)

1 comment:

Silindile Ntuli said...

That's so cool, there's so much we're unaware of, a whole other world in front of us but we can't see it.