Detection of stationary and moving targets under clutter interference by the big brown bat Eptesicus fuscus(In English)

摘要

Using a two-choice psychophysical procedure, we studied the detection of a semicircular target under background noise interference by trained Eptesicus fuscus. The target was presented under conditions of either stationary, revolving, oscillating or different combinations of oscillation and revolution at a bat-to-target distance of 10 cm increments from 30 to 110 cm inside a test chamber. During the test, the amplitude of the target echo was always larger than that of the background noise at a bat-to-target distance up to 80 cm. The echo amplitude from a revolving target was sinusoidally modulated between a maximal and minimal value. The percent correct response of target detection by these bats decreased with increasing bat-to-target distance. However, the percent correct response was always higher for a moving target than for a stationary one at each bat-to-target distance tested