What is it like to film bats in caves?

If you have ever seen the amazing footage of bats leaving or entering caves you might have been curious what it is like to flim thousands of animals all flying around your camera? 

Today I saw a great video on this topic and was excited to share it here.  What makes it extra special is that in addition to great images of bats in the wild and in a wind-tunnel the person explaining everything is someone who's presentations and videos I've seen before.  AMAZING STUFF!

Interviewed is Nickolay Hristov from Winston-Salem State University.  Read about some of his ongoing projects by clicking this (link).

From Hristov's STEM page I thought this was a great list of questions that have been addressed in bats using high-speed video recording

"Questions scientists have answered by filming bats in high-speed:

• How do individual bats move within a group?
• How bats use their wings to fly?
• What is the speed of a group of bats?
• Do bats hit or touch each other in a group
• How close are bats when they emerge from a cave?"

From 'Science Fridays' Enjoy!

The secret of the bat genome TED talk (Emma Teeling)

Another Ted talk this one on what the genome of bats can tell us about bat evolution.

Below the talk can also be accessed by clicking this (Link)

From the Ted website:
"In Western society, bats are often characterized as creepy, even evil. Zoologist Emma Teeling encourages us to rethink our attitude toward bats, whose unique and fascinating biology gives us insight into our own genetic makeup. (Filmed at TEDxDublin.)"

Human echolocation - 'seeing' like a bat

An intersting podcast/article on human echolocation and 'What is it like to be a bat' was published in Nature News recently (here). 

"

What is it like to be a bat?

Bat ecologists have made it their life’s work to find out, philosophers argue we may never understand, and one blind woman knows better than anyone. In the first episode of Audiofile, Nature’s new sound science series, find out how much we can really know about what it’s like to be a bat, and what it tell us about the limits of human perception.

• Thomas Nagel: What is it like to be a bat?
• David Papineau, KCL
• Simmons lab, Brown University
• Lore Thaler, Durham University

"

 

This is the first podcast from the new Audiofile - and is quite nice.  I except if you check back there will soon be more podcasts relating to sound (here).

When foraging gets rough - bats jam each others echolocation calls

A new study on Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasilensis) published this month reveals that bats are not always kind to each other when it comes to foraging behaviors.  These bats that use echolocation to forage for food are deploying strategies to prevent other individuals from successfully finding food.  How these bats are doing this has been compared to the jamming technology of a military aircraft. 

Not always nice - individual Mexican free-tailed bat may impede others of the same species from being able to find food using echolocation by 'jamming' their echolocation calls.

The interference that these bats create is called jamming and researchers Aaron Corocoran and William Conner from Wake Forest University have found that individuals will jam the call of others during competition for their nightly hunt for food (namely insects).

Read more (here).

Secrets and Mysteries of Bats (documentary)

I though that putting a link to this nice documentary about bats was long overdue.

Enjoy!

Echolocaton MUSIC JAM!

I just stumbled upon this really cute video about echolocation.

Its from Bat Conservation International.

Enjoy!

Hipster bat returns

Just keeping with a theme not touched upon for sometime... hipster bats!

ENJOY.

Do bats have eyes?

Out of curiosity I wanted to see what google suggested is one of the main questions regarding bats and apparently it is 'do bats have eyes?'  The answer to this question is yes.  In fact many bats have big beautiful eyes.  In some cases bats do not rely on their sight very much and instead echolocate, other bats use their noses to find fruits but some use their eyes extensively.  Here you can see some beautiful examples of bat eyes!  Also- should you like musical inspiration while perusing please enjoy a cover of 'Call me Al'' by Noah and the Whale- a song with its reference to a 'rolly polly little bat faced girl' that just comes to mind when I consider bat faces!

Science Photo library winning photo by Steve Gschmeissner



Ok some species have tiny little 'batty'-eyes!