bat want to consume a lot to might long flight . One species , the Japanese pipistrelle bat , exhaust enough dirt ball in a single nighttime to increase its weight by 20 per centum . So when they go out hunt , they involve to eat up as much as they perchance can . A new study in the journalPNASshows how they can be so efficient : They plan ahead . Echolocating bats take into account where their next fair game is before they even capture their current target , the study find .
A group of Japanese research worker surveyed almost 800 bat - on - worm attacks over the form of six daytime , redo the direction in which the bat let loose sonar beams from a microphone arrangement . They then analyzed 70 of those fire located along 35 escape paths to see how bat coordinated back - to - back attacks . The research worker also used numerical modeling to determine which flight paths made it most probable for a cricket bat to catch its prey , incur that a squash racket fly a route that took into story both the position of its first fair game target and its second was more probable to catch them both .
Modeling how a bat ’s flight path might change to make it more efficient to capture both Prey 1 and Prey2 ( bottom right ) . Image Credit : Fujioka , PNAS ( 2015 )
The chiropteran began count on out how to get to their next meal before they even reached the first one , the study found . “ When the cricket bat consecutively captured two prey particular within unforesightful time intervals , sonar attention guide not only toward the straightaway target but also to the next prey before capturing the straightaway one , ” the researcher write . As they approached their first prey , they were already directing sonar pulses toward their second target to minimize the amount of time spend between the two targets . In fact , “ bats might take their trajectory paths to keep both prey items within their sonar beam , ” they hint .
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