This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools, the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins communications offices.
They can’t tell fortunes and they’re useless with the stock market but bats are quite skilled at predicting one thing: where to find dinner.
Bats calculate where their prey is headed by building on-the-fly predictive models of target motion from echoes, Johns Hopkins University researchers find. The models are so robust, bats can continue to track prey even when it temporarily vanishes behind echo-blocking obstacles like trees.
Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed a way to study the brain of a bat as it flies, recording for the first time what happens as an animal focuses its attention.
Bats’ use of echolocation to detect, track and catch prey is well documented. But this Johns Hopkins team is the first to show how the relatively mysterious head and ear movements factor into the hunt.
You’re at a crowded party, noisy with multiple conversations, music and clinking glasses. But when someone behind you says your name, you hear it and quickly turn in that direction. The same sort of thing happens with bats and Johns Hopkins University researchers have discovered how a bat’s brain determines what’s worth paying attention to. The findings, which have implications across animal systems, were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Bats fly with breathtaking precision because their wings are equipped with highly sensitive touch sensors, cells that respond to even slight changes in airflow, researchers have demonstrated for the first time.