It could potentially enhance navigation systems in autonomous drones and underwater vehicles, offering efficient ways to interpret surroundings without relying on traditional cameras or GPS.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

In a discovery that could inspire innovations in robotics and autonomous vehicles, Israeli scientists proved that bats can navigate over greater distances by echolocation than previously thought.

“While it’s well-known that bats use a natural sonar system to navigate by emitting sound waves and interpreting the returning echoes, previous research indicated that bats also rely on vision during flight,” researchers from Tel Aviv University and Tel Aviv’s Steinhardt Museum of Natural History said.

Echolocation is a biological sonar system used by certain animals, including bats, dolphins, and some birds, to navigate and locate objects in their environment by producing sound waves.

When these animals emit high-frequency sound waves, the waves travel through the air or water and bounce back after hitting objects.

The returning echoes provide information about the location, size, shape, and distance of objects, allowing the animal to “see” its surroundings using sound.

This approach could potentially enhance navigation systems in autonomous drones and underwater vehicles, offering efficient ways to interpret surroundings without relying on traditional cameras or GPS.

The study, led by Tel Aviv University Professor Yossi Yovel, is the first to demonstrate that bats are capable of orienting themselves across kilometers without relying on their sense of sight or other sensory aids. The team’s findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed Science journal.

“In controlled laboratory settings, we’ve seen that bats can use echolocation alone to navigate within confined spaces. However, echolocation typically detects objects only up to about 10 meters away, raising the question of whether bats can rely solely on this sense over open, natural terrains spanning many kilometers.”

To answer this question, Yovel and his team designed an extensive six-year study to test bats’ long-distance navigation abilities in Israel’s Hula Valley.

The team used a unique tracking system akin to GPS capable of following Kuhl’s pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus kuhlii) — a tiny species weighing only six grams that is common in the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe.

The researchers began by capturing approximately 60 bats from a roost in the Hula Valley and transporting them about three kilometers away within their familiar environment.

To isolate the effects of echolocation, they temporarily impaired the bats’ other navigational senses. Some bats were fitted with cloth strips over their eyes, effectively blinding them, while others underwent procedures to reduce their sense of smell and magnetic perception.

Despite these limitations, the bats demonstrated remarkable navigational capabilities, finding their way back to their roosts without difficulty.

“This finding alone was exciting, as it showed that bats could navigate home using only echolocation under real-world conditions,” said Dr. Aya Goldshtein, a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute and a former student of Yovel who was involved in the research.

To understand how bats process environmental echoes to create a mental map, the researchers developed a computerized acoustic model of the bats’ natural surroundings in the Hula Valley.

This model allowed the scientists to simulate the echoes bats would experience in the environment, helping to shed light on the bats’ navigational decision-making.

According to Yovel, this model is based on a 3D map of the Hula Valley, which replicates the echoes that bats encounter during their flights.

“We found that bats actively choose routes rich in acoustic information, such as areas with dense vegetation, where echoes offer more detail than in open fields,” he explained.

“They avoid open spaces where the echoes provide less navigational data. Some regions produce distinct echoes, which become auditory landmarks for the bats, helping them maintain a mental map of the area.”

This map, composed of “sound landmarks,” enables bats to recognize their environment much like humans use visual landmarks to navigate familiar surroundings.

The study provides the first empirical evidence that bats construct such detailed acoustic maps in natural settings, which enhances our understanding of their complex sensory and cognitive abilities.

The findings challenge long-standing assumptions about the limits of echolocation. “Bats have shown us that they are far more adaptable than we imagined,” said Yovel.

“Their ability to rely on a sophisticated system of sound-based navigation over vast distances not only reflects the remarkable evolution of their sensory abilities but may inspire new technologies in areas like robotics and autonomous navigation.”

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Just like human children learn to walk to school and back home, bat pups learn to navigate while flying, Israeli researchers find.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A new Israeli study revealed previously unknown information about the development of baby bats, known as pups, finding that they learn to navigate while flying in similar ways to how human children learn to walk to school and back home.

Tel Aviv University researchers Professor Yossi Yovel, Dr. Aya Goldshtein, and Dr. Lee Harten worked on the study, which was recently published in the journal Current Biology.

According to a statement from TAU, the researchers attached tiny GPS devices to bat mothers and pups, which tracked their locations, as well as another device that recorded their wing movements and speeds.

“Many animals must become independent at a very young age in order to survive. For flying animals, the ability to navigate on their own to sources of food is an essential aspect of independence,” said Prof. Yovel in a statement.

Because the learning curve is so steep for flying creatures, in which the process could lead to a swift fall and death, the way that animals learn to fly is particularly interesting.

At first, Dr. Harten wrote, “we discovered that…mothers carry their pups on their bodies all night long.”

But after a few weeks, “the mother carries her pup to a specific tree, located no more than a kilometer from the cave, which serves as a kind of ‘nursery.’ Here she leaves it, sometimes with a friend, and flies on to the food source, later collecting her pup on her way back home.”

Eventually, the pup “starts flying to nearby trees, constantly expanding its circles of navigation. We believe that the ‘nursery’ tree is chosen by the mother as a starting point, an anchor not too far from home, from which the pup can navigate to other places. The tree also serves as a meeting place for mother and pup if the little one happens to get lost.”

“It is important to note that the process whereby the young learn from their parents can save evolution millions of years,” added Yovel.

“Human children rely extensively on this type of learning, and the present study shows that animals do the same.”

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“Our theory of the origin of the pandemic is basically the only coherent one that exists,” said Dr. Jonathan Latham.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

Scientists at the non-profit Bioscience Resource Project in Ithaca, New York, have discovered that SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, may have first appeared in a handful of Chinese miners in 2012.

“Our theory of the origin of the pandemic is basically the only coherent one that exists,” Dr. Jonathan Latham said in a Facebook post on August 10.

Dr. Latham and Dr. Allison Wilson, co-founders of the Bioscience Resource Project, published their findings on their website, Independent Science News, on July 15 in an article titled, “A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

“No one has found any significant flaws in it since we published it on July 15th,” said Latham.

“Our proposal is that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, wo got it from Kunming Medical University,” he said.

“They in turn obtained it from tissues belonging to six miners who fell ill in 2012 with a mystery coronavirus infection that caused COVID-like symptoms.”

The researchers point out that the known viral genome sequence most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 is RaTG13, which was collected from the Mojiang mine in 2013 by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In April 2012, six workers in that mine, which is located about 1,000 km from Wuhan, fell ill from a mystery illness while removing bat feces. Three of the six subsequently died.

Through the translation of a Master’s thesis written in Chinese, Latham and Wilson discovered that the miners’ symptoms very closely resembled those of COVID-19.

The Master’s thesis concluded that “the unknown virus lead to severe pneumonia could be: The SARS-like-CoV from the Chinese rufous horseshoe bat.”

Samples taken from the miners were later sent to the lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from which the researchers propose that it escaped in 2019.

Two of the miners were ill for over four months, which may have provided the virus with a unique opportunity to evolve and adapt to a human host.

“It is a well-established principle that viruses that jump species undergo accelerated evolutionary change in their new host,” said Latham and Wilson.

However, Sars-CoV-2 has “remained functionally unchanged or virtually so” since the pandemic began.

“That is to say, its evolutionary leap to humans was completed before the 2019 pandemic began,” the researchers said.

Latham and Wilson are calling for “an independent and transparent investigation” of the Wuhan lab.

“The scientific establishment has labeled the lab escape theory a ‘rumor,’ an ‘unverified theory,’ and a ‘conspiracy’ when its proper name is a hypothesis,” they said.

“By taking this stance, the scientific establishment has given the unambiguous message that scientists who take the possibility of a lab origin seriously are jeopardizing their careers,” said Latham and Wilson.

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Thousands of yet-to-be-discovered coronavirus strains are believed to be present in bats.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

Researchers from the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program have discovered six new coronavirus strains potentially related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) currently plaguing the world.

The study published on Thursday by the scientific journal PLOS ONE examined bats living in Southeast Asia.

Between 2016 and 2018, researchers studied hundreds of samples of saliva and feces from at least 11 different bat species in Myanmar, an area where the locals often come into close contact with the wildlife.

“Two of these sites also featured popular cave systems where people were routinely exposed to bats through guano harvesting, religious practices and ecotourism,” the study said.

The new strains of coronavirus were found in the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat, the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat, and the Horsfield’s leaf-nosed bat.

“Viral pandemics remind us how closely human health is connected to the health of wildlife and the environment,” said the study’s lead author Marc Valitutto.

“Worldwide, humans are interacting with wildlife with increasing frequency, so the more we understand about these viruses in animals – what allows them to mutate and how they spread to other species – the better we can reduce their pandemic potential,” Valitutto said.

According to the study, thousands of yet-to-be-discovered coronavirus strains are believed to be present in bats.

“Many coronaviruses may not pose a risk to people, but when we identify these diseases early on in animals, at the source, we have a valuable opportunity to investigate the potential threat,”  said the study’s co-author Suzan Murray

“Vigilant surveillance, research and education are the best tools we have to prevent pandemics before they occur,” she added.

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Chinese “wet markets” are known to sell dozens of unusual species for consumption, such as bats, lizards, and baby crocodiles.

By World Israel News Staff

Chinese markets are still selling bats believed to be the original source of the deadly coronavirus, reports The Daily Mail.

According to the report, over the weekend thousands of Chinese customers were seen visiting “wet markets” in Guilin, south-west China.

Besides poultry and produce, Chinese “wet markets” are known to sell dozens of unusual species for consumption, such as bats, lizards, and baby crocodiles which are generally killed on-site.

Bats and scorpions were being sold for “traditional medicine,” rabbits and ducks were being slaughtered and skinned on floors covered with “blood, filth, and animal remains,” and dogs and cats were “crammed into rusty cages,” the report said.

Jason Beaubien of NPR described what a Chinese wet market looked like after visiting one late in January.

“Live fish in open tubs splash water all over the floor,” Beaubien said. “The countertops of the stalls are red with blood as fish are gutted and filleted right in front of the customers’ eyes. Live turtles and crustaceans climb over each other in boxes.”

Scientists have not yet determined exactly how the coronavirus first infected people, but evidence suggests it originated in bats. There are conflicting reports with regard to whether bats were sold at Wuhan’s now-shuttered Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

Of the 33 samples from the Wuhan market that tested positive in February for the coronavirus, officials say 31 were from the area where wildlife booths were concentrated.

“You’ve got live animals, so there are feces everywhere. There’s blood because of people chopping them up,” said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which works to protect wildlife and public health from emerging diseases.

Associated Press contributed to this report

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