Bat Wing Super Sensors Guide Its Acrobatic Flight

Bats are the only mammals capable of true powered flight, and now researchers have figured out how these clever creatures fly with such breathtaking precision and maneuverability.

Investigation of bat wings finds that they are equipped with highly sensitive touch sensors that respond to even the slightest changes in airflow, according to a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Cell Reports.

As lead author and Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Cynthia Moss shares in the following video, the findings could inspire new high tech aircraft:

“Until now no one had investigated the sensors on the bat’s wing, which allow it to serve as more than a propeller, a flipper, an airplane wing or any simple airfoil,” Moss said in a press release. “These findings can inform more broadly how organisms use touch to guide movement.”

Moss and her colleagues studied big brown bats (a common species found throughout North America), but they believe all bats possess the sensitive touch sensors on their wings. The sensors — two types of touch cells — are especially clustered at the base of tiny hairs on the bat wings. If you have a cat, very similar cells are located at the bottom of your feline’s whiskers.

Such systems are “innervated,” meaning nearby neurons (nerve cells) are connected to the spinal cord, which in turn is connected to the brain.

What’s remarkable about bats is that the nerve cells in wing skin are connected to the lower parts of the bat’s spinal cord, which normally only connect with an animal’s trunk. The researchers expected that the nerve cells would connect much higher on the bat’s spinal cord, closer to where the wings are.

As a result of this unexpected configuration, the entire body of a bat is primed for flight.

Here’s how the system basically works: tiny hairs on the wings detect everything from nearly imperceptible wafts of air to major gusts. The nerve cells at the base of the hairs send that information over to the spinal cord, which then transmits the info to the bat’s brain and trunk region.

All of this happens repeatedly in split second time, enabling the bat to very quickly make adjustments to its flight path.

Read more at Discovery News