Directional hearing in a silicon cricket

10 Phonotaxis is the ability to orient towards or away from sound sources. Crickets can locate conspecifics by phonotaxis to the calling (mating) song they produce, and can evade bats by negative phonotaxis from echolocation calls. The behaviour and underlying physiology have been studied in some depth, and the auditory system solves this complex problem in a unique manner. 11 12 13 Experiments conducted on a simulation model of the system indicated that the mechanism output a directional signal to sounds ahead at calling song frequency and to sounds behind at echolocation frequencies. We suggest that this combination of responses helps simplify later processing in the cricket. To further explore this result, an analogue, very large scale integrated (aVLSI) circuit model of the mechanism was designed and built; results from testing this, agreed with the simulation. The aVLSI circuit was used to test a further hypothesis about the potential advantages of the positioning of the acoustic...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: BIOSYSTEMS
• Authors: Richard E. Reeve, André van Schaik, Craig T. Jin, Tara Julia Hamilton, Ben Torben-Nielsen, Barbara Webb
• Keywords: BIOSYSTEMS 2007, Echolocation Calls, Echolocation Frequencies, Sound Sources