Dr. Poppy Crum

And 80% of the time about, that moth gets away.

Multiple things.

I call it almost an acoustic arms race that's happening between the two.

And there's a lot of acoustic subterfuge between the moth.

But there's also beautiful deterministic responses that they have.

And so first...

Deterministic behaviors, again, be it an athlete, be it effectiveness, being fast, quick in making good decisions that get you the right answer are always important.

So moths have just a few neurons.

When that echolocating bat is flying at a certain point, when those neurons start firing, they'll start flying in more of a random pattern.

You'll see the same thing with seals when there are great white sharks around, right?

It's decreasing the probability that, you know, it's easy for them to continue to track you.

So they'll fly in a random pattern and then when their neurons saturate, you know, when it gets, those calls get close enough, the moth will drop to the ground with the idea that, you know.

Assuming we don't live in cities, in a natural world, the ground is wheat, grass.

It's a difficult environment for an echolocating bag to locate you, right?

So that is just a deterministic behavior that will happen regardless.

But then the interesting part is their body is reflecting meta reflectors effectively so that the bat may put out its call and it deflects the energy of the call away from its body.

So you're deflecting it away from critical areas.

And, you know, this is all like happening and happening.

That's the changes in the physical body are interesting, but then it's the behavioral differences.

They're really key, right?