Remember Where’s Waldo? Finding one character amid a visually cluttered page might be a fun game, but what if it was one you needed to play every night to survive? Like young readers searching for a man in a red-striped shirt in a sea of barber poles and candy canes, bats must identify small targets in large, busy environments. But unlike a casual Waldo seeker, bats must search while they actively avoid colliding with obstacles.
Just as visual clutter impairs the ability to find important information or objects, auditory clutter can interfere with the detection or identification of nearby sounds. Although reflective surfaces give sound life and richness and affect one’s sense of space, people are rarely aware of their echoes or reverberation. Bats must distinguish the echoes from insects they are interested in from the echoes produced by trees, branches, buildings, and other bats in the colony. This quick...
