Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Save Lucy’s President, Mrs. Sturges, found an interesting article that looks into the mystery of bat sounds. Scientists have found that some of the sounds that bats make resemble those of birds. Out of the 1,300 different bat species, the social vocalizations of about 50 have been studied. Of those 50, scientists discovered that about 20 of them are actually singing. It’s hard to hear bats singing if you go outside and watch them flying around. This is because a bat’s vocal range is in the ultrasonic range that is inaudible to human ears. In order to hear the bats’ sounds and research them further, scientists recorded bats singing and slowed them down. Their research has shown some similarities between bat and bird songs. Both bats and birds use the basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex parts of their brains to sing. Scientists believe that neural circuits also control bat vocals and how they are able to sing. Even though most bat species sing in an ultrasonic range, one species loves to sing in a range that humans can hear. The singing of the Greater Sac-Winged bat can be heard for miles. If you would like to read more about bats singing, you can find the article here. And now for a public service announcement. Daylight Savings Time begins on Sunday. Don’t forget to move your clocks 1 hour ahead before you go to bed tonight.
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a high school student, bat advocate, and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. She now enjoys watching the bats fly over her home on summer evenings. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for over three years. Hi everyone I hope you all had a good week! I found a really cool article about how scientists are studying bat echolocation to help with all kinds of things. The US. Navy is making a new sonar for their ships. The new sonar is going to be based off of how bats echolocate. The Navy ships already have sonar, but it isn’t anything like a bat’s. Even though a bat only uses its two ears and a Navy ship uses complicated sonar arrays, bats still have a better idea of what things are. Using information learned by studying bats, an engineer built a prototype that goes on the nose of an undersea robot. The new device can interpret returning sonar echoes like a bat’s ears. It will also be cheaper, and smaller than their current model. Much like the US Navy, researchers in Israel are also information learned by studying bat echolocation. But instead of using the information to help the military, they are using it to help farmers. Farmers sometimes have trouble knowing how much food they are actually going to get from the plants in their field. Some years, crops might yield more food than others and it is difficult for a farmer to estimate how much they will have from year to year. This makes it difficult for them to determine a good price for that year’s crops and how […]