By IANS,
London : Fist sized bats emit much louder sounds than the noisiest rock concerts anywhere, according to a new study.
Using microphone arrays and photographic methods, researchers found that bats emit ear shattering sounds exceeding 140 deciBels (dB) at 10 cm from the source, far louder than the 115-120 dB produced by a rock concert, reports Sciencedaily.
This is the first comparative field study of bat echo-location sounds, illustrating the value of an interdisciplinary approach combining bat biology, ecology, behavioural biology and acoustics.
Annemarie Surlykke of Institute of Biology, SDU, Denmark, and her colleague Elisabeth Kalko from the University of Ulm, Germany, studied the echolocation behaviour in 11 species of insect-eating tropical bats in Panama.
The findings have been reported in PLoS ONE.