Echolocation: Bats and whales behave in surprisingly similar ways
Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - 10:30
in Biology & Nature
Sperm whales weigh up to 50 tons, and the smallest bat barely reaches a gram. Nevertheless, the two species share the same success story: They both have developed the ability to use echolocation -- a biological sonar -- for hunting. Now researchers show that the biosonar of toothed whales and bats share surprisingly many similarities -- even though they live in very different environments and vary extremely in size.