Capturing the Auditory Experience of Behaving Bats: A Preliminary Study

Insectivorous bats are remarkable in that they navigate complex environments in the dark and choose the insects they consume while flying at high speeds. Studies have confirmed that various bat species have the ability to distinguish the size, texture and location of objects in complex environments and in total darkness. Theories of how bats locate, identify and capture insects using echolocation have been developed without having examined the actual echoes perceived by a behaving bat. This paper describes our progress toward developing instrumentation intended to provide the first binaural recordings of a bat´s auditory experience while behaving in the wild. Our work demonstrates that ultrasonic transducers and associated electronics can be carried by a behaving bat and that the ultrasonic vocalizations can be wirelessly transmitted to a base station for digitization and subsequent analysis.