Description

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Picture Courtesy: THE HINDU

Context:

BatEchoMon, is India’s first automated bat monitoring system, developed as part of the Long-Term Urban Ecological Observatory in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru.

What is BatEchoMon?

It is a special device that listens to bats’ sounds (called echolocation calls) and figures out which species of bats are making them. This is important because studying bats used to take a lot of time and effort, but now this machine can do it automatically.

Before BatEchoMon, researchers had to sit for hours listening to recordings of bats’ sounds. Once a researcher spent 11 months analyzing just 20 nights of data. Now, with BatEchoMon, the same work could be done in just a few hours.

Advanced bat detectors cost a lot of money, but BatEchoMon is much cheaper. It costs one-third of what similar systems cost.

How does it work?

It starts working at sunset: Bats are nocturnal animals, meaning they come out at night. So, the device turns itself on automatically when the sun sets.
It uses a microphone to listen : The microphone is called an Audiomoth, which is designed to pick up ultrasonic sounds—sounds too high for humans to hear. These sounds are what bats use to "see" in the dark..
It filters out noise: Not all ultrasonic sounds come from bats. Some might come from insects or machines. The device uses a tiny computer called a Raspberry Pi to separate bat calls from these other noises.
It identifies bat species: Once it isolates the bat calls, the device compares them to a database of known bat sounds. This helps it figure out which species of bat made the call.
At the end of the night, the device provides:
- - A spectrogram (a visual graph showing the frequencies of the bat calls),
  - Audio recordings of the bat calls,
  - And statistics about which species were most active and when.

Way Forward

Bats play an important role in nature. They help control insect populations, pollinate plants, and spread seeds. But because they are hard to study, we don’t know much about them. Devices like BatEchoMon will help scientists learn more about bats and protect them better.

Source:

THE HINDU

PRACTICE QUESTION

Q.Which biological adaptation allows bats to detect and interpret ultrasonic echoes effectively?

A) Large external ears that amplify incoming sound waves.

B) Specialized auditory neurons tuned to high-frequency signals.

C) A flexible larynx capable of producing variable pitches.

D) Enhanced visual receptors that complement echolocation.

Answer: B

Explanation:

Specialized auditory neurons within a bat’s brain enable it to detect and interpret high-frequency ultrasonic echoes. These neurons are finely tuned to specific frequency ranges, ensuring precise analysis of returning sound waves. While large external ears (option A) help collect echoes, they do not directly process them. The flexible larynx (option C) generates ultrasound but does not contribute to detection or interpretation. Enhanced vision (option D) supports general orientation but plays no role in processing ultrasound data.