Interpreting Echoes: Why Bats Are Better Than US

Abstract

Ultrasound has been utilised by medical professionals for the past 50 years as a tool to investigate living tissue non-invasively. There have been great technological advances to increase the effectiveness of the equipment used to image with ultrasonography, but there may still be important lessons to learn from animals that similarly employ ultrasound to assess their environment, such as bats. Despite most species having good eyesight, bats are widely recognised for having a finely-tuned ability to both emit ultrasonic pulses and interpret the resulting echoes from both moving and stationary targets with pin-point accuracy. They achieve target detection, localisation and classification using a variety of methods to enhance the information extracted from the echoes of their emitted ultrasonic pulses. This paper outlines the principles of the echolocation employed by bats and provides a comparison with the features used for medical ultrasonography, highlighting the differences that allow bats to remain ahead of the field.