This is scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

If you've ever watched a moth flutter clumsily around a light on your porch,

the insect might seem like a sad match for a predatory bat.

The flying mammal is practically a fighter jet in comparison, with its sophisticated sonar

and acrobatic maneuvers, but some moth species have evolved high-tech tricks of their own.

For example, their wings have long dangling tails.

So that they're fluttering in space and they're twisting behind the moth as the moth flies creating an alternative

echoic target that the bat perceives as a target that it can actually attack.

Rubin and her team investigated that phenomenon by experimentally altering the wings of moths.

With some moths they snipped the hindwing lobes and tails.

With other moths they glued on extra bits of wing.

And then they tethered the differently shaped moths,

one at a time, in a padded darkened chamber,

a sort of claditorial ring for bats on the hunt,

and observed the battle with high speed video and ultrasonic

microphones. By the way that echo locating sound has been slowed down ten times so

we can hear it. Turns out it was the moths with longer hind wings or wingtails that lived

to fly another day because the bats often wound up with just a mouthful of tail.

And of course, these tail ends

do not have a nutritional value essentially

and would not be a wise place for the bat to attack

if it really wanted to capture them off.

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