Zoologger: The moth with the highest-pitched hearing

Sharp-eared ultrasound detector (Image: Nigel Cattlin/FLPA)

Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world

Species: Galleria mellonella
Habitat: Pretty much everywhere – humans have inadvertently spread them by moving around the beehives they infest

The greater wax moth is flapping gently through the dark, looking for a mate, when it suddenly hears a high-pitched click. The sound is well outside the range of human hearing, but the moth has no problem picking it up. It swerves to the right – and escapes the jaws of a predatory bat by inches.

Greater wax moths have hearing like no other animal we know of. They can hear sounds that are so high-pitched that no known bat can produce them.

In the evolutionary race for survival, this moth has a head start.

Put simply, greater wax moths are a pest. Their larvae often live inside honeybee nests, where they survive on a diet of little more than beeswax. They have a particular taste for the brood combs where the bee larvae live, and can quickly trash the nest.

Adult moths only leave the hive to mate. Males gather on nearby trees and, shortly after sunset, begin making calls to females, at frequencies above the range of human hearing.

Higher-pitched still are the calls of their predators: bats. While the male moth's calls range from 90,000 to 95,000 hertz, bats echolocate using sounds often closer to 110,000 Hz.

Evolution has pushed moths to keep up, so although they can't produce calls in the same range as bats, they can hear them coming. One North American moth can hear sounds up to 150,000 Hz – good, but not good enough to escape all bats, whose calls can reach 212,000 Hz.

SOURCE : http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23501-zoologger-the-moth-with-the-highestpitched-hearing.html