Bats Have Superfast Muscles—A Mammal First
Rapid buzz is "third reason why they've been successful evolutionarily."
Found in some songbirds and snakes, superfast muscles in bats occur in the throat and enable a crucial hunting behavior: echolocation, in which the bat sends out sound waves and listens for echoes bouncing off prey.
As a bat closes in on an insect, the mammal emits more than 160 calls a second, a phenomenon called terminal buzz.
(Interactive: Hear tropical bat calls.)
The discovery explains how bats release such rapid calls. "It's really cool, because the muscles belong to this rare group, superfast muscles," said study leader Coen Elemans, a biologist at the University of Southern Denmark.
But "at the same time, they also limit the bats."
Though fast, the specialized muscles allow only a finite number of calls per second, Elemans
