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Moths draped in stealth acoustic cloak evade bat sonar
- qzw 6y ago> Holderied says it could be possible to make materials ‘10 times more efficient at absorbing sounds than what we are using in our homes and offices’. Think sound-absorbing wallpaper, not panels, he adds. I would love to have something like that. All these open floor plan offices and open concept homes are loud AF.
- orliesaurus 6y agoI would love it around my place, on the walls, no more loud neighbors would make this place paradise!
- vosper 6y agoHanging sheets of foam-backed mass-loaded vinyl might help. But maybe not practical :)
- wumms 6y agoThere's a catch for a moth fur farm startup though (plush might work better): > The acoustic cloak works between 20kHz and 160kHz
- zeristor 6y agoOne does have to consider the frequency, I’m assuming dampening high frequency sound is easier than low frequency.
- grawprog 6y agoAs someone who's lived under an inconsiderate asshole who would play loud bass heavy music at 2-3am. Yes, low frequency sounds are much harder to dampen. Especially when they shake your roof and walls.
- marcosdumay 6y agoTo use in construction one must have to answer some very difficult questions like how well does the material survive dust and the cleaning process? How long does it last by itself? How does it interact with the other constraints like fire resistance, allergies, etc? And after all that, filtering low frequencies is still a hopeless task.
- dylan604 6y agoNot to mention flammability of the material.
- gabereiser 6y agoAfter listening to best softies of the 80s for 3 hours from my neighbors walls, yes please. I also play guitar so to have a “jam box” would be great. Like a vocal box where you’re isolated but for really REALLY loud guitars.
- RileyJames 6y agoThat’s a thing, primarily used for recording, but your use case would work. They’re called isolation boxes, easy enough to DIY build one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFxH9sVe3Ls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFxH9sVe3Ls
- gabereiser 6y agoYeah, exactly, but I want to be in there with it cranked to 11. I need to build a bigger box.
- aemreunal 6y agoNow if only they had ladders to climb out of bathtubs, they'd be unstoppable.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoWell that answers my question about some moths are so furry. Selection at work!
- akamoonknight 6y agoI love all the things we're still learning from nature! All of the secrets and intuition that's yet to be found astounds and excites me.
- aasasd 6y agoRichard Dawkins, in either ‘The Selfish Gene’ or ‘The Blind Watchmaker’, describes the arms race between bats and insects. Quite a fascinating affair—just bats' own evolution is intriguing: how do they differentiate between their own and others' echolocation signals? Well they have a ‘code’ in the signal specific to each specimen. And then, insects ‘learn’ to mimic bats' signals so a bat thinks it's another bat there and not a dinner. Etc etc. This discovery might be at least the third one this year in this same field, if another one mentioned in the article isn't the one I've seen on HN.
- jussij 6y agoThe Hawk moth has evolved to emit ultrasonic clicks that jam the bat sonar: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/moths-avoid-capture-talking-back-bats https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/moths-avoid-capture-... Just more examples of the power of evolution.
- erdewit 6y agoAccording to the story it's not about jamming the sonar but giving of a warning that the moth is toxic. Sort of the acoustic equivalent of bright colors that some toxic animals have.
- jussij 6y agoI stand corrected. As you point out the moth species I quoted uses this 'bad experience' signal as it's sonic defense. However, this study found: The moths’ ultrasound production clearly confused the bats, according to researchers, who reported that bats faced with sonar-jamming moths often tried to catch moths from empty air, apparently because the moths’ ultrasound signals had left the bats confused about the actual location of their prey. This kept working over several repetitions of the experiment with the same bats. For the researchers, this confirmed that moths were actually jamming bats’ sonar in order to escape, not just trying to startle them or mimic another, less tasty, moth. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/05/moths-rub-their-genitals-together-to-jam-bat-sonar/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/05/moths-rub-their-genitals-... Which obviously goes to show there are many different types of weird an wonderful interactions going on between bats and moths.
- m463 6y agothat's what I though of: https://steveblank.com/2009/03/23/if-i-told-you-i%E2%80%99d-have-to-kill-you-the-story-behind-the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley/ https://steveblank.com/2009/03/23/if-i-told-you-i%E2%80%99d-...
- miohtama 6y agoWould be nice to understand how natural selection lead to this material and what were the steps. First you had a moth with some fur that absorbed maybe 0.1% ultrasound and then it started to increase from there generation and generation?
- andy_ppp 6y agoWell the ones that didn’t do this got eaten by bats, it’s very easy to see how survival of the fittest works CB in this case. Designing an eye with evolution seems somewhat harder...
- jfim 6y agoThey just evolved in multiple steps, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- imtringued 6y ago>Designing an eye with evolution seems somewhat harder... It's absolutely trivial. You just start with light sensitive skin. Then evolve a cavity to create a pinhole lens and then finally fill the hole with a lens. Making the eyeball move is optional but shouldn't be too tricky.
- amurale 6y agoSomething like that. Evolution = natural variation + natural selection. In any given population there is natural variation: fastest moth, hairiest moth, whitest moth, etc. After evolutionary pressure is applied, the other moths are preferentially devoured, and the hairiest moth becomes the dominant variation with the most offspring. For a similar historic account, read about the black form of the peppered moth which rapidly took over the moth population, caused by evolutionary pressure + single mutation in the year 1819. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36424768
- 6y ago
- joshxyz 6y agoTis gonna be a problem for batman or nah?
- Ftuuky 6y agoI know nothing about this kind of metamaterials [0] but would it be possible to replicate them at an industrial scale? For things such as superior acoustic insulation and so on? [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/11/17/2014531117 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/11/17/2014531117
- aasasd 6y agoMy completely uneducated guess is that this is probably similar in approach to ‘Vantablack’, in that you'll have to orient the scales a certain way relative to each other and the base. So they'll need to be likewise ‘grown’ on the surface, in a slow and very expensive process. (Though apparently there are VB variants as spray paint, presumably with lower absorption.) Of course, this is after someone even figures out how to make such scales and slap them together on the base. This pavillion is the largest object on which VB was used to my knowledge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxkvKJmlyHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxkvKJmlyHQ However, it's hard to imagine VB being grown on it instead of sprayed, and the next-largest candidate seems to be the BMW X6.