Bats use ultrasonic echolocation to catch prey and negotiate obstacles while flying in the dark.
Echolocation is an interesting phenomenon to study for various reasons.
It is interesting from an evolutionary perspective to get insight into how costly features may evolve, depending on the benefits gained from them. Echolocation is also a challenge for neurophysiologists, as bats appear to be sensitive to changes in echo delay as small as 10 nanoseconds. Finally, finding out how an animal that uses echolocation can recognise and classify objects, or find its way back to its roost can teach us what kind of information these processes rely upon. My Research I am interested in the way echolocating FM bats process information about motion. I started off at a very basic level by confining the question to motion introduced by the bat itself when heading towards a target straight ahead.