Tropical Moths Fight Bats With Blasts Of Ultrasound From Their Genitals
Hawk Moth Genital Ultrasound Screenshot via Nature Rubbing your own privates is actually pretty useful if you're a hawk moth. In waging millions of years of battle, both moths and their predators, bats, have adapted certain evolutionary tactics to give their species the upper hand. Bats have a "stealth mode" of hunting, and some use clicks that are out of the frequency of moths' hearing ranges to locate prey. Some kinds of moths, though, have one-upped them with a battle tactic that's way cooler: defensive sonic genital blasts. Researchers from Boise State University and the University of Florida studied how hawk moths, a family of moths found most commonly in the tropics, responded to the ultrasonic hunting calls of bats. Though their techniques are a bit different (for obvious reasons), both the male and the female in three different species of hawk moth seem to rub their genitals across their...