Bats can make ultra-fast decisions about how to attack their prey or even call off the attack. A bat is capable of adjusting its attack until it is approximately 100 milliseconds away from its prey.
Bats use echolocation for orientation. They emit ultrasonic sounds, which hit potential prey nearby, sending an echo back to the bat. From this echo the bat can define where the prey is and attack it. A new study has examined how hunting bats react when approaching their prey. The study concludes that bats are capable of gathering information from the environment and process it surprisingly fast in order to determine how to carry out the attack or maybe call it off.
“A bat is capable of adjusting its attack until it is approximately 100 milliseconds away from its prey,” explains Signe Brinkløv, postdoc at the Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark.
“It is surprising that they are so fast. Until now we thought that bats are deploying a kind of autopilot in the last phase of an attack limiting them to an unchangeable behavioral pattern.”
Picture Credit : Google