BatEchoMon or “Bat Echolocation Monitoring”, is an autonomous system capable of detecting and analysing bat calls in real-time.
Key Highlights
- It is India’s first automated bat monitoring system.
- It was developed by researchers as part of the Long-Term Urban Ecological Observatory in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru.
- The monitoring system allows chiropterologists — scientists who study bats — to “go beyond data processing and towards asking interesting questions about bat ecology”.
- BatEchoMon is more than a bat detector. Aside from a recording device, it includes components that can record, store, process, and analyse species-wise bat activity on the fly.
- The device’s brain is a Raspberry Pi microprocessor, which processes the data captured by Audiomoth.
- Bat detectors are only the specialised recording devices that can convert the ultrasonic echolocation calls of insectivorous bats into audible sounds for humans.
(Source: The Hindu)
