Study Reveals That Humans Can Learn To Echolocate Similarly to Bats, Whales

Learning to echolocate like bats and whales can be done by humans, as shown in an experiment to explore this idea.

It only took ten weeks for a group of people to learn this unusual way of navigation using reflected sound, just like some species. Using clicks to determine distance and if the way is blocked; took ten weeks to learn for those involved in the study.

Bats, Whale Use Echolocation

The study included 12 participants diagnosed as legally blind from childhood and 14 sighted people, based on the results published in 2021.

Using reflecting sound is what winged mammals and marine mammals use a lot in the day to day lives, but some blind people learn to use the same principle with clicks to see obstacles and shapes, reported Science Alert.

Other ways to generate echoes are with cane tapping, finger snaps, or just making clicking sounds to navigate.

Despite how helpful to echolocate as bats and whales can be, it is presently instructed to very few blind people. For years, specialist echolocators have been trying to spread the message, and this data confirms that a simple training regime is all that is needed, noted Smithsonian Magazine.

Psychologist Lore Thaler from UK's Durham University state there is no other study that got good feedback from blind participants. The results were published in June last year.

Study of Echolocation on Humans

It took 20 training sessions that lasted 2 to 3 hours longer per session. Later the authors of the study saw that blind and sighted people from old to young learned how to gauge returned clicks to judge distance and shape.

For several weeks the subjects were taught how to navigate a virtual maze with corridors in several T-sections, U-bends, and zigzags to see how big and the relative position of designated objects by mouth click.

The final two sessions put participants' new navigation skills to work in a virtual maze they've only experienced now.

These trained echolocators could manage the maze acceptably compared to the seven expert echolocators doing this skill for many years.

Study subjects performed fairly well as experts in supplemental tests to confirm the shape and direction of certain surfaces.

Navigating Through Sound

Previously research done show non-blind people can use clicking sounds to locate their position in several sessions.

However, this was the first-ever study to see whether the findings applied to blind people as well as people of various ages. Somehow the parts of the brain let the individual visualize what they hear around them, but whether those blinded could use the same neural paths the same is questioned.

Older people with weaker vision and hearing will not translate the information as effectively as younger individuals. In the study, age was not a problem, with 79-year-old people learning the skill.

The results have analyzed the results of the small experiment that concluded age is a factor in hitting obstacles in the maze task. Three months after the study, the blind participants used the skill well.

Based on a small study, humans can learn to echolocate as bats and whales do, so the conclusions that need verification are limited.