Every night, a battle begins between the bats and the moths they feed on . While the former launch ultrasound to orient themselves and locate their "dinner", many moths have developed a fine "ear" that allows them to detect these ultrasounds and flee quickly before being attacked. Only members of one species of bats, Barbastella barbastellu s , manage to hunt them down with relative ease. But how?
To find out, Matt Zeale and his colleagues at the School of Biological Sciences at Brystol University (UK) measured how insects detected potential predators by collecting the activity of the moths' auditory nerves when they "track position. of bats. "
"Record activity ears of moths in nature has revealed exciting data , " says Zeale, which found that while the moths can detect other types of bats over 30 meters away, Barbastella are 100 times more silent , as they have developed a kind of "whisper" that makes them detectable at only 3.5 meters … Too close for insects to flee, according to scientists in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology .
