Richard Slater
Due to the nocturnal nature of bats, a signi.cant amount of research is done on these animals at
night and in their darkened natural habitats such as cave systems. As a result it is frequently more
convenient to track and identify them using sound rather than light. Audio equipment and techniques
are often more appropriate for this task because they require no special adaptation for nocturnal use
whereas, due to the low levels of ambient light at night, visual equipment does.
In addition, bats themselves make extensive use of high frequency sound in the form of vocalisations
to navigate through and hunt within their natural environment. They use sound to orient themselves in
space, determine their position relative to their locale, detect the presence of prey as well as determine
their prey's position and velocity (Schnitzler & Kalko, 2001).
Consequently, researchers studying bats often take advantage of this by making recordings of the
bats' vocalisations and then using these recordings to identify each animal. Despite the fact that such
a system is realisable and already commercially available it is, due to its proprietary nature, quite
expensive (Conan, 2017). The goal of this project is therefore to produce a machine (or the software
necessary to construct such a machine) which is capable of cheaply and reliably duplicating the existing
bat identi.cation product. That is to say, a machine which can reliably isolate and identify bats based
on the sounds they emit.
References:
Conan, James. 2017 (February). Proposed Honours Projects. Online via RUConnected.
Schnitzler, Hans-Ulrich, & Kalko, Elisabeth K. V. 2001. Echolocation by Insect-Eating Bats. Bio-
Science, 51(7), 557{569.