A new study found that bats follow their own “traffic rules” when searching for food. This observation provides more understanding why these nocturnal animals, despite being blind, do not collide with each other when they are out.
Researchers at the University of Bristol in U.K. observed the movements of bats near the village of Barrow Gurney in Somerset. They identified a pattern, which was that bats chase each other, perform turns in pairs, and slow down to prevent collision. These traffic rules help keep the bats organized and synchronized when looking for food.
Bats chase each other by emitting and listening to the loud and high-pitched biosonar calls produced by everyone. By recording these distinct sounds, the researchers calculated the calls and compared it to the bats' movements.
"Collective movements of flocking birds or shoaling fish are amongst the most fascinating natural phenomena, and everyone has experienced the challenges of walking through a moving crowd. What information individuals use for movement coordination is, however, very difficult to know - except in the case of echolocating bats," Marc Holderied, study author and senior lecturer in Biology of the university, said in a press release.
The analysis showed that the bats were copying each other's flight to determine their distance from each other. This movement happens in just 500 milliseconds, which is much faster than the blink of our eyes.
"The bats seem to have adopted a simple trick: once another individual is close enough for your biosonar to pick up its echo, copy this individual's flight direction within four to five of your own wingbeats," said Luca Giuggioli, a movement ecology expert at the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences.
The researchers believe that the findings of their study may be useful in improving the plans used by different industries in search and rescue missions, task monitoring, and surveillance operations of automated vehicles.
The study was published in the March 26 issue of PLOS Computational Biology.
