Ear Deformations Give Bats a Physical Mechanism for Fast Adaptation of Ultrasonic Beam Patterns
Ear Deformations Give Bats a Physical Mechanism for Fast Adaptation of Ultrasonic Beam Patterns
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耳朵变形为蝙蝠提供了快速适应超声波束模式的物理机制
DOI：
10.1103/physrevlett.107.214301
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发表时间：
2011-11-14
影响因子：
8.6
通讯作者：
Mueller, Rolf
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gao, Li;Balakrishnan, Sreenath;Mueller, Rolf
包括人类在内的许多哺乳动物都有复杂的外耳形状，可以按照特定的方向和频率对传入的声音进行衍射。通过这个物理过程，外耳的形状将声源信息编码为来自每只耳朵的感觉信号。结果表明，马蹄蝠可以通过快速非刚性耳变形来动态控制这些衍射过程。蝙蝠的耳朵形状可以在大约100毫秒内在不同的极端形态之间改变，从而改变它们的声学特性，以适应不同的声学传感任务。
A large number of mammals, including humans, have intricate outer ear shapes that diffract incoming sound in a direction-and frequency-specific manner. Through this physical process, the outer ear shapes encode sound-source information into the sensory signals from each ear. Our results show that horseshoe bats could dynamically control these diffraction processes through fast nonrigid ear deformations. The bats' ear shapes can alter between extreme configurations in about 100 ms and thereby change their acoustic properties in ways that would suit different acoustic sensing tasks.