Sound-absorbent wings and fur help some moths evade bats

[Judi Lynn]

Checkered scales on wings and furry bellies let the insects avoid detection
BY JENNIFER LEMAN 6:00AM, NOVEMBER 14, 2018



SOUNDING OFF The cabbage tree emperor moth has wings with tiny ridged scales. A new study finds that the structures help the insects hide from hunting bats.

COURTESY OF THOMAS R. NEIL

Some moths aren’t so easy for bats to detect.

The cabbage tree emperor moth has wings with tiny scales that absorb sound waves sent out by bats searching for food. That absorption reduces the echoes that bounce back to bats, allowing Bunaea alcinoe to avoid being so noticeable to the nocturnal predators, researchers report online November 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“They have this stealth coating on their body surfaces which absorbs the sound,” says study coauthor Marc Holderied, a bioacoustician at the University of Bristol in England. “We now understand the mechanism behind it.”

Bats sense their surroundings using echolocation, sending out sound waves that bounce off objects and return as echoes picked up by the bats’ supersensitive ears (SN: 9/30/17, p. 22). These moths, without ears that might alert them to an approaching predator, have instead developed scales of a size, shape and thickness suited to absorbing ultrasonic sound frequencies used by bats, the researchers found.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sound-absorbent-wings-and-fur-help-some-moths-evade-bats?tgt=nr

[cstanleytech]

1. In other words they have stealth technology for sound much like how we have developed it for

radar.