Study
Die Ultraschall-Ortungslaute der Hufeisen-Fledermäuse in verschiedenen Orientierungssituationen
Schnitzler, Hans-Ulrich
Zeitschrift für vergleichende Physiologie, 1968
The calls of horseshoe bats were recorded while the animals flew at different speeds and while they were swung towards and away from a wall on a pendulum, so that the Doppler shift in the returning echo could be varied independently of the bat’s own behaviour.
- Studied in
- Rhinolophus ferrumequinum
- Sample size
- horseshoe bats recorded while flying and while swung on a pendulum
Flying bats lowered the frequency of their outgoing call by almost exactly the amount their own motion would raise the echo, holding the returning echo within a narrow frequency band regardless of flight speed.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Horseshoe bats compensate for Doppler shift, stabilising the echo frequency at the value their hearing is most sensitive to.
How NatureHQ reads it
A remarkable piece of sensory engineering and an unusually clean demonstration of it. These bats have a hearing system exquisitely tuned to one narrow frequency band, which is useless if their own flight keeps shifting the echo out of it — so they retune the call instead, continuously, by an amount that depends on how fast they are travelling. The pendulum is what makes it evidence: it changes the Doppler shift without changing anything else the bat is doing.
- One species group; Doppler compensation is characteristic of constant-frequency bats and absent in most others.
- A 1968 study with the sample sizes and instrumentation of its time.
- Published in German; the result is universally cited but the paper is rarely read.
Swinging a bat on a pendulum to see if it retunes its own voice
A flying bat’s own speed shifts the pitch of its returning echo. Does the bat correct for that?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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Published by: Springer journalsPublished in a Springer journal.
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