Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 038701 (2009) [4 pages]Acoustic Effects Accurately Predict an Extreme Case of Biological MorphologyReceived 4 January 2009; revised 9 May 2009; published 14 July 2009 The biosonar system of bats utilizes physical baffle shapes around the sites of ultrasound emission for diffraction-based beam forming. Among these shapes, some extreme cases have evolved that include a long noseleaf protrusion (sella) in a species of horseshoe bat. We have evaluated the acoustic cost function associated with sella length with a computational physics approach and found that the extreme length can be predicted accurately from a fiducial point on this function. This suggests that some extreme cases of biological morphology can be explained from their physical function alone. © 2009 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.038701
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.038701
PACS:
43.80.+p
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