Radar jamming, as done by moths
It turns out that pretty much everything humans can do with technology, nature has already figured out, maybe at least to a lesser extent. Nearly everything. So far I don't think nature has managed intercontinental ballistic missiles. I hope.
One fun example is radar jamming. Radar works by bouncing a radio wave off something and seeing what comes back. You can jam it by saturating the sender with noise. The signal sender will know there's something out there, but won't be able to tell what size, shape, or distance.
The closest natural analogue to radar is echolocation, famously done by bats. When bats prey on moths, they rely on making high-pitched sounds which reflect off their target to make up for their weak eyesight (they're not totally blind).
The first part of the reply shot from the moths in the echolocation arms race came from tiger moths. They're able to produce ultrasonic clicks in response to bats' echolocation. Most species of tiger moth simply use their clicking pattern to warn bats that the moths are toxic.
However, some tiger moths have taken it further by producing clicks at an astonishingly high rate: Up to 4,500 per second! It's incredibly effective. Research shows that moths using echolocation jamming cut down bats' success rate by 90%.
The bats aren't staying idle, though. A 2022 study showed that to counter, bats are changing their echolocation frequencies to one the moths aren't jamming.
Bats also need to worry about accidentally jamming themselves. A bat's echolocation ping is one of the loudest sounds an animal can make, and their hearing is highly sensitive. If they heard their own ping directly, they could be deafened.
To account for that, bats use a small muscle in their ear to clamp their ear bones in place (preventing them from vibrating and picking up sounds) while emitting a ping. It's released when the echo is expected to return.
How good are bats at math? Pretty good! They know that as they get closer to a target, their pings need to be shorter and shorter (down to 0.5 milliseconds) to allow time to hear the returning echo.
