Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey.

ABSTRACT: Visual predators rely on fast-acting optokinetic responses to track and capture agile prey. Most toothed whales, however, rely on echolocation for hunting and have converged on biosonar clicking rates reaching 500/s during prey pursuits. If echoes are processed on a click-by-click basis, as assumed, neural responses 100× faster than those in vision are required to keep pace with this information flow. Using high-resolution biologging of wild predator-prey interactions, we show that toothed whales adjust clicking rates to track prey movement within 50-200 ms of prey escape responses. Hypothesising that these stereotyped biosonar adjustments are elicited by sudden prey accelerations, we measured echo-kinetic responses from trained harbour porpoises to a moving target and found similar latenc

SUBMITTER: Vance H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8547948 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature