Abstract

Acoustic processing of audio and sonar by animals involves the temporal as well as spatial aspects of an incoming signal. We can presume that a bat, for example, acquires an entire spatial picture of its surroundings from its sonar returns rather than some empty series of blips that the untrained human ear derives from the sound of a ship’s sonar; in effect the bat sees with its ears [1]. The barn owl makes equally impressive use of hearing with passive sonar to locate and capture prey in the dark. In these cases, and in speech recognition by humans, the sequential nature of the information plays an essential role.

© 1995 Optical Society of America