Bats wiggle their ears and nose to help them echolocate

Bats wiggle their ears and nose to help them find their way at night, researchers have found. The wiggles improve their ability detect sound waves that bounce off objects and navigate precisely, allowing them to distinguish a moth's wing-beat from a falling leaf. Researchers used the findings to design a drone with improved navigation abilities, and the findings could potentially lead to improvements in other technologies too, such as more accurate speech recognition devices. Virginia Tech associate professor Dr Rolf Mueller and his team have discovered that small movements of horseshoe bats' ears and noses help them navigate in complex natural environments. This research has led to the design of a bat-inspired robotic sonar head, shown here being attached to a drone, with a movable'noseleaf' and'ears' Echolocation is the use of sound waves and echoes to determine where objects are in space.