Pages

Jump to bottom

2 comments

1 Dark_Falcon  Sun, Dec 25, 2011 11:36:10am

Drone tech can give an invaluable edge, but Japan’s communications technology is just as good as that of the US and Australia. It would be possible for the Japanese to intercept a drone’s transmissions and even jam them. I do hope Capt. Watson has considered this possibility. There is also the fact that the whalers could use the transmissions from ships controlling the drones to locate those ships and then avoid them.

I love this sort of ‘move and counter-move’. It gives my brain a nice workout.

2 Bob Dillon  Sun, Dec 25, 2011 12:32:45pm

re: #1 Dark_Falcon

Then you will enjoy this for sure …

Bat and moth arms race revealed
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Researchers have revealed more detail about the evolutionary “arms race” between bats and moths.

One study in the journal Current Biology has shown how a species of bat uses a quiet “stealth mode” of the clicks it uses to locate its prey.

Another from a Royal Society journal showed that a moth can distinguish between clicks that mean it has been spotted, and clicks that mean a strike.

This allows the moths to choose when to spend energy on defensive measures.

Moths live for just a few days and must evade predators and find a mate, often without eating.

Bats eat a wide array of insects but many species prefer the simple, high-nutrition snack that a moth provides.

They both navigate and hunt by emitting a stream of ultrasound clicks and listening for the echoes in a natural form of sonar, with the clicks repeating faster and faster as the bats close in on prey.

Some moths, upon hearing the clicks, are known to reply with their own high-intensity clicks, or to fly erratically in looping evasive manoeuvres, or even to simply drop out of the sky.

The interplay between bats’ strategies to hunt and the moths’ strategies to avoid being eaten are frequently cited as a classic example of co-evolution.

“It often seems like predators and prey are going through a contiunous cycle or ‘arms race’, where each is trying to outwit the other,” said Hannah ter Hofstede, the University of Bristol researcher who co-authored the Current Biology study.

“The predator is always trying to capture the prey and that selects for better defences in the prey. Over evolutionary timescales, that causes gradual changes in both groups.”

Pitched battle …

The rest …


This page has been archived.
Comments are closed.

Jump to top

Create a PageThis is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.
Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.
Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
LGF User's Guide RSS Feeds

Help support Little Green Footballs!

Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled.

Donate with
PayPal
Cash.app
Recent PagesClick to refresh
Detroit Local Powers First EV Charging Road in North America The road, about a mile from Local 58's hall, uses rubber-coated copper inductive-charging coils buried under the asphalt that transfer power to a receiver pad attached to a car's underbelly, much like how a phone can be charged wirelessly. ...
Backwoods Sleuth
3 days ago
Views: 186 • Comments: 1 • Rating: 4