To: Christopher Susak
From: Zahra’a Hussain
Date: 1/22/18
Subject: Project 1A: Written Informative Summary
In the article “’Bat-nav’ reveals how the brain tracks other animals” it discusses how bats and other animals that like to be in groups, use their brains to sense their surroundings using eco-location or their own way of communication. According to Abbott, she states that “Bats…are social animals that, like people, need to know their locations of other members of their group so they can interact, learn from each other and move around together.” The article explains how they are able to communicate very well, even though they are blind creatures of the dark.
So the idea behind it all is that a bats brain has many cells that would tell/signal the bats to head a certain direction or if there’s food nearby. But if there’s another bat nearby, the bats’ hippocampus (which is the part of the brain where your memory is stored) records their brain signals and those cells tell them whether or not if there’s food or to head in the right direction as well as if there’s a foe or friend nearby. Those cells fire to tell the bat that there’s a member nearby.
To test this theory, scientists did an experiment where they would give a treat to one of the bats to track the others presence and vice versa. The treat itself helped motivate the bats to track each other. Scientists also grabbed a plastic, bat sized bat and move it around from point A to point B to see if the other bat would do the same but with a plastic figure.
They recorded these bats and hooked their brains to see how each of their hippocampus responded. The neurons in the brain fired whenever there was an object/thing near them and scientists found out that the same place also tracks down the object they’re looking for, which is something that’s fascinating considering that bats can remember all that. They did the same experiment with rats and found similar results as well.
This experiment is just a small research on how groups of animals are able to actually track each other down so easily. Bigger questions arise from this about how their brainsare able to do it and if their minds are as complex as ours.
Citations
Abbott, A. (2018, January 12). 'Bat-nav’ reveals how the brain tracks other animals. Retrieved January 24, 2018, from