Tag Archive for 'Vibration'

The recording device, the model Antirrhinum plant, and the approaching Rhodanthidium sticticum bee. Image credit: Vibrant Lab.

Buzzing Sounds of Pollinators Lead Plants to Increase Their Nectar Production, Study Says

May 29, 2025 by News Staff

Flower visitors, including pollinators, produce characteristic sounds through flapping wing movements during flight. These sounds may provide key information...

The tokay gecko (Gekko gecko). Image credit: Duncan Leitch.

Geckos Have ‘Sixth Sense,’ Biologists Say

Oct 7, 2024 by News Staff

Geckos use the saccule — a part of their inner ear traditionally associated with maintaining balance and body positioning — to detect low-frequency...

A spider orb web is an enormous, reconfigurable, regenerative, and highly sensitive acoustic antenna. Image credit: Zhou et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2122789119.

Orb-Weaving Spiders Use Their Web as Acoustic Antenna

Apr 1, 2022 by News Staff

Hearing is a fundamental sense of many animals, including all mammals, birds, some reptiles, amphibians, fish, and arthropods. The auditory organs of these...

Yan et al. designed an acoustic fabric, woven with a fiber that is designed from a piezoelectric material that produces an electrical signal when bent or mechanically deformed: (a) the tympanic membrane is a four-layer construct composed of circumferentially and radially oriented high-modulus collagen fibers, which are key for sound conduction; the tympanic membrane motion is ultimately transmitted to the cochlea through the ossicular chain, wherein short cilia fibers convert pressure waves into electrical signals (ionic), which are picked up by the nervous system; (b) in the acoustic fabric, high-modulus Twaron yarns and cotton yarns are oriented at right angles, mimicking the construction of the tympanic membrane; this construction converts faint audible frequency sound pressure waves into low-order mechanical vibration modes; within that same medium, a single strand of piezoelectric elastomeric fiber transducer is woven, leading to a synergistically coupled fabric, where sound transduction is a collective effect; this results in a fabric capable of operating as a sensitive microphone that detects weak sound signals (for example, human speech) as low as 10-7 atm. Image credit: Yan et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04476-9.

Newly-Developed ‘Acoustic Fabric’ Converts Sounds into Electrical Signals

Mar 18, 2022 by News Staff

Fabrics, by virtue of their composition and structure, have traditionally been used as acoustic absorbers. Inspired by the auditory system, a team of engineers...

The buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). Image credit: Marta Boroń / CC BY 2.0.

Study: Floral Vibrations by Buzz-Pollinating Bumblebees More Powerful Than Their Flight or Defensive Buzzes

Jul 29, 2020 by News Staff

Buzzing by buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris audax) workers during pollen foraging is much more powerful than that used for defense or flight, according...