What is ecolocation

Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is a biological sonar used by several animal species. Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects. Echolocation is used for navigation, foraging, and hunting in various environments. Echolocating animals include some mammals and a few birds; most notably Laurasiatheria. Especially some bat species and odontocetes (toothed whales and dolphins), but also in simpler forms in other groups such as shrews, and two cave dwelling bird groups, the so-called cave swiftlets in the genus Aerodramus (formerly Collocalia) and the unrelated Oilbird Steatornis caripensis.

Echolocation is a complex as well as highly evolved process that has given bats the ability to exploit an ecological niche closed to all however a few animal groups-the night sky. Echolocation is not unique to bats, however it has arguably reached its evolutionary peak in these mammals. A simple definition is that it’s the analysis by an animal of echoes of its own emitted sounds, by which it builds a sound picture of its immediate environment. A number of animals use sound in this way as well as many use high frequency sound or ultrasound, beyond the range of human hearing . Acoustic is the science of sound as well as deals with the origin of sound as well as its propagation, either in free space or in pipes as well as channels or closed spaces. It’s the basis of many fundamental phenomena as well as also of numerous practical applications. A first subdivision of the field can be based on the different media in which. sound can propagate. In our everyday life sound waves are in air or somewhat more generally, in gases. From this we distinguish should in liquids which has its most important application in underwater techniques as well as furthermore, sound in solid bodies. This subdivision intersects with another one based on the sound frequency. The acoustical aspects of music are dealt with in a particular discipline named musical acoustics, which on the one hand examines the production of music by listeners. At this point musical acoustics blends with psychoacoustics the goal of which is the systematic investigation of the way in which sounds of any kind are processed as well as perceived by our hearing. Acoustics is an interdisciplinary science being interconnected with many other fields- with Physics, mechanical as well as electrical engineering, medicine, psychology, biology, architecture as well as building construction, music etc – a fact which makes the boundaries of acoustics somewhat unclear however contributes to the particular appeal of this science .