The findings were published in
Nature Machine Intelligence by Mueller and a former Ph.D. student, lead author Xiaoyan Yin.
"I have long admired bats for their uncanny ability to navigate complex natural environments based on ultrasound and suspected that the unusual mobility of the animal's ears might have something to do with this," said Mueller.
A new model for sound location
Bats navigate as they fly by using echolocation, determining how close an object is by continuously emitting sounds and listening to the echoes. Ultrasonic calls are emitted from the bat's mouth or nose, bouncing off the elements of its environment and returning as an echo. They also gain information from ambient sounds. Comparing sounds to determine their origin is called the Doppler effect.