Bats Jam Rivals Sonar to Steal a Meal.doc

Bats Jam Rivals’ Sonar to Steal a Meal 蝙蝠干扰对手“偷食” Many bats hunt at night—and use echolocation, or sonar, to zero in on their prey. [echolocation clip] Thats slowed down 20 times, so you can hear it. But some insects, like the tiger moth, have figured out how to evade that echolocation—by jamming it. It makes these ultrasonic clicks in the last moment before it would normally be captured by a bat. [clicking sound] And this interferes with the bat’s echolocation, causing that bat to miss.” 很多蝙蝠在夜间觅食，并利用回波定位或者声纳来瞄准猎物。【回音定位声音片段】这是放慢了20倍以后的声音，所以人类能听到。但有些昆虫，比如虎娥已经学会通过干扰回波定位来逃避它。虎娥会在被蝙蝠捕获的最后时刻发出这种超声波滴答声来自救。【超声波滴答声】这种声音会干扰蝙蝠的回波定位，导致蝙蝠猎物失手。 Aaron Corcoran, a postdoc at Wake Forest University. Corcoran studied that phenomenon, and says hes now discovered that the jamming strategy isnt limited to prey. Bats do it, too—to foil each others hunting efforts. 亚伦·科克兰，维克森林大学的博士后。科克兰研究了这种现象，并宣布他发现这种干扰战略并不仅仅局限于猎物，蝙蝠们为了阻止彼此觅食也会这样做。 Corcoran and his colleagues recorded Mexican free-tailed bats, Tadarida brasiliensis, echolocating in the wild. And they happened to pick up a sound bats made only when other bats were hunting. [jamming clip] It reminded them of the moth jamming call. So they played back that sound to bats hunting tethered moths, in a field experiment. And sure enough—bats who heard the bat jamming call while echolocating, were 70 percent less successful at capturing the tethered moth, than bats who heard a generic tone, [tone clip] or no sound at all. The study is in the journal Science. [Aaron J. Corcoran and William E. Conner: Bats jamming bats: Food competition through sonar interference] 科克兰和他的同事对墨西哥游离尾蝠在野外定位记录。恰巧他们捕捉到蝙蝠仅在其它同类觅食时才会发出的声音。【干扰声音片段】 这种声音会让它们想起飞蛾的干扰声。因此在一项野外实验中，他们对狩猎被栓系飞蛾的蝙蝠回放了那段干扰声。不出所料，正在发出回波定位的蝙蝠当中，听到该干扰声的那些蝙蝠捕食该飞蛾的成功率比那些听到普通声音【声音片段】或没有听到声音的蝙蝠低了70%。这项研究刊发在《科学》杂志上。【亚伦·J·科克兰和威廉·E·康纳：蝙蝠干扰蝙蝠：通过声纳干扰进行的食物竞争】 Of course, if you have a porch light you may be wondering: arent there more than enough moths to go around? But heres the thing. The Mexican free-tailed ba