Moths possess acoustic meta-reflector structures on their bodies that deflect and dampen incident echolocation energy from bats.
"their body is reflecting—meta-reflectors, effectively, so that the bat may put out its call and it deflects the energy of the call away from its body. So you're deflecting it away from critical critical areas." (said at 2:18:36)
While moth wings and thoracic scales are recognized in biomechanics as natural acoustic metamaterials that provide acoustic camouflage against bat biosonar, their mechanism is broadband sound absorption (damping), not reflection or deflection. Published experimental studies show that moth thoracic and wing scales act as resonant, deep-subwavelength ultrasound absorbers that dissipate 67% to 72% of incident ultrasonic sound energy, explicitly operating by absorbing sound waves rather than reflecting or deflecting echoes away from the body.
Crickets possess bimodal auditory neurons with dual sensitivity peaks at 6 kHz and 40 kHz that elicit opposing deterministic behavioral responses.
"Crickets have bimodal neurons that have sort of peaks in two different frequency ranges for the same neuron. And each frequency range will elicit a completely different behavior. So you've got a peak at 6k and you've got a peak at 40k. And cricket—and this is the same neuron—cricket hears 40k from a speaker, run over to it because that's got to be my mate or something, and you hear 40k and they run away and it's very predictive behavior." (said at 2:26:47)
The speaker misattributes the behavioral responses and frequency associations. In crickets (such as Teleogryllus oceanicus), low frequencies (~4.5–5 kHz) correspond to conspecific calling songs and trigger positive phonotaxis (approaching a potential mate), whereas ultrasound (~20–40 kHz) corresponds to predatory bat biosonar and elicits negative phonotaxis (avoidance/evasion steering). Furthermore, these opposing behaviors are driven by distinct neural pathways: ascending interneuron 1 (AN1) is tuned to calling songs and mediates positive phonotaxis, while interneuron-1 (Int-1 / AN2) is specialized for ultrasound avoidance. Although some individual auditory interneurons (like Int-1 or ON1) receive input across 3–40 kHz, the same neuron does not independently switch to trigger mating approach at one peak and escape behavior at another.
- contradicts: Postsynaptic inhibition mediates high-frequency selectivity in the cricket Teleogryllus oc… (The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 1987) · cited 46x in the literature
"Int-1 was excited by frequencies between 3 and 40 kHz, being similar, therefore, to the tympal organ (ear) in its broad range sensitivity; however, it responded differentially to high and low frequencies in terms of the number of action potentials evoked per stimulus tone pulse, the average discharge rate, and the latency of response. It was especially responsive to ultrasound (greater than 20 kHz), discharging at rates up to 400 spikes/sec (average rate), with 10 msec latencies... These results are consistent with previous behavioral experiments showing that during flight, Int-1 was both necessary and sufficient for the ultrasound avoidance steering behavior... These results further strengthen Int-1's proposed role as a "bat-detector" during flight and suggest only a limited role in other contexts such as social behavior." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi) - contradicts: Phonotaxis in flying crickets. II. Physiological mechanisms of two-tone suppression of the… (Journal of comparative physiology. A, Sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology 1986) · cited 49x in the literature
"When a low frequency tone (3-8 kHz) was presented simultaneously with an aversive high frequency tone (in a two-tone stimulus paradigm), the high frequency avoidance steering behavior was suppressed. Suppression was optimal when the low frequency tone was between 4 and 5 kHz and about 10-15 dB louder than the high frequency tone" (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)