by Matthew Cobb
Over at The Scientist, there’s a page devoted to “tools and techniques for tracking mammalian behavior”. The latest addition relates to the work of Nickolay Hristov, at Winston-Salem State University. Hristov was working as a postdoc with Thomas Kunz at Boston University, and they wanted to study what bats were doing in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Using military-grade thermal infrared imaging technology, they were able to observe the bats in the dark, and produced this amazing video (not sure about the Bach soundtrack, myself):
Hristov and his co-workers published an article (open access) in Integrated and Comparative Biology at the beginning of 2008 describing their technique, and its advantages for studying the aerosphere. They were able to estimate the size of the bat colony (it seems to fluctuate with time, by as much as 1 million bats), and also get greater insight into how individual bats navigate inside the cavern, and how they chase moths outside.
We know that in Venezuela bats have to deal with a giant centipede that snarfs them in mid-air. Maybe – like snakes – the centipede can detect passing bats using infrared? Or maybe there are just so many bats it’s easy to get one…
h/t: John Altrincham (Leeds, UK) and his EZNews
That is a creepy centipede. I like the way all those legs enable it to scamper up a wall with ease.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!
Insects are not supposed to eat mammals! It’s against Natural Law.
Yuck!
I’m glad they didn’t set that to Bach as well. The first one, though, made me think of sperm. Now I wonder if they listen to Bach at infertility clinics.
It’s a good thing you told us what they were, since I’d have guessed that they were some kind of shiny sea creatures living in the ocean.
Cool pictures, and I’m glad that they’re getting away from illuminating nocturnal animals, as if they’d know from that how they normally behave.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
The notion that they use infrared is … believable. There are a couple of pages on the web about seeing near-infrared for yourself by blocking out most of the other frequencies.
And you can see infrared if your mobile phone has a cheap camera (which most do). Those security cams with the dim red LEDs in them are bright bluish white to the mobile phone cam.
I wonder what in the world does this have to do with anything at all? It is …well ..silly..plain silly..solve the problems we fCE rather than playing with this bs [bs]..please. We are mindless..nocturnal animals? go to sleep…and wake up and be gentle.
Leave, Marilyn. Go back to where you hate everything and saute your ignorance.
Yeah, Marilyn, if you don’t like this website, just go elsewhere. Downers not appreciated.
Marilyn, whatever are you on about? You’re becoming a really tiresome downer here – if you don’t like the blog, why don’t you go to sleep. And maybe don’t come back when you wake up.
Matthew – cool stuff, but sweet Jesus, that centipede is a right horror . Going to be looking over my shoulder for days.
I adore the blog
The thermal imaging of the bats is simply fascinating to watch. It makes for quite a beautiful scene and it looks like a good way to study bat behavior.
The centipede video nearly got me slapped but my fiance knew what I was thinking before I tried it and warned me of the slap if I ran my fingers across her arm or back while she was watching it. It might have been worth the slap to see her jump, but I decided to be nice.