Doppler detection triggers instantaneous escape behavior in scanning bats

Abstract

Animals must instantaneously escape from predators for survival, which requires quick detection of approaching threats. Although the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of looming objects have been extensively studied in the visual system, little is known about their auditory counterparts. Echolocating bats use their auditory senses to perceive not only the soundscape, but also the physical environment through active sensing. Although object movement induces both echo delay changes and Doppler shifts, the actual information required to perceive movement has been unclear. Herein, we addressed this question by playing back phantom echoes mimicking an approaching target to horseshoe bats and found that they relied only on Doppler shifts. This suggests that the bats do not perceive object motion in the spatiotemporal dimension (i.e., positional variation), as in vision, but rather take advantage of acoustic sensing by directly detecting velocity, thereby enabling them to respond instantaneously to approaching threats.