ArticlePLoS biology2017
Tongue-driven sonar beam steering by a lingual-echolocating fruit bat.
Article in PLoS biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Identifying spin bias of nonsignificant findings in biomedical studies.BMC research notes · 2023Pooled it
- Looking ahead: echolocation and flight behaviors of two fruit bat species navigating a corridor.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- Article
- High-frequency vocalizations and hearing in hummingbirds: what we know and opportunities for the future.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Review
- Spatial priors affect sensory weighting in navigation and landing in Egyptian fruit bats.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Adaptive echolocation behavior of bats and toothed whales in dynamic soundscapes.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- Bats expand their vocal range by recruiting different laryngeal structures for echolocation and social communication.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Article
- Coevolution of motor cortex and behavioral specializations associated with flight and echolocation in bats.Current biology : CB · 2022Article
- A stable hippocampal code in freely flying bats.Nature · 2022Article
- Spatial attention in natural tasks [version 1; peer review: 2 approved with reservations].Molecular psychology : brain, behavior, and society · 2022Article
- Inflight head stabilization associated with wingbeat cycle and sonar emissions in the lingual echolocating Egyptian fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2021Article
- Hearing, echolocation, and beam steering from day 0 in tongue-clicking bats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Cortical representation of group social communication in bats.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Sensory adaptations reshaped intrinsic factors underlying morphological diversification in bats.BMC biology · 2021Article
- A Modular Approach to Vocal Learning: Disentangling the Diversity of a Complex Behavioral Trait.Neuron · 2019Review
- Signatures of echolocation and dietary ecology in the adaptive evolution of skull shape in bats.Nature communications · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animals enhance sensory acquisition from a specific direction by movements of head, ears, or eyes. As active sensing animals, echolocating bats also aim their directional sonar beam to selectively "illuminate" a confined volume of space, facilitating efficient information processing by reducing echo interference and clutter. Such sonar beam control is generally achieved by head movements or shape changes of the sound-emitting mouth or nose. However, lingual-echolocating Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, which produce sound by clicking their tongue, can dramatically change beam direction at very short temporal intervals without visible morphological changes. The mechanism supporting this capability has remained a mystery. Here, we measured signals from free-flying Egyptian fruit bats and discovered a systematic angular sweep of beam focus across increasing frequency. This unusual signal structure has not been observed in other animals and cannot be explained by the conventional and widely-used "piston model" that describes the emission pattern of other bat species. Through modeling, we show that the observed beam features can be captured by an array of tongue-driven sound sources located along the side of the mouth, and that the sonar beam direction can be steered parsimoniously by inducing changes to the pattern of phase differences through moving tongue location. The effects are broadly similar to those found in a phased array-an engineering design widely found in human-made sonar systems that enables beam direction changes without changes in the physical transducer assembly. Our study reveals an intriguing parallel between biology and human engineering in solving problems in fundamentally similar ways.
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