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Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate
sciencehabit writes: Blind from infancy, Daniel Kish learned as a young boy to judge his height while climbing trees by making rapid clicking noises and listening for their echoes off the ground. No one taught him the technique, which is now recognized as a human form of echolocation. Like Kish, a handful of blind echolocators worldwide have taught themselves to use clicks and echoes to navigate their surroundings with impressive ease — Kish can even ride his bike down the street. A study of sighted people newly trained to echolocate now suggests that the secret to Kish's skill isn't just supersensitive ears. Instead, the entire body, neck, and head are key to 'seeing' with sound — an insight that could assist blind people learning the skill.
Anybody else read the headline as "Study Shows How Humans Can Echocolate"?
I read that as "eat chocolate" even after readreading it twice. I still would've been interested, though, since it's toxic to some mammals.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
You guys can cack as many jokes as you want but being able to navigate in pitch darkness using echolocation is a pretty awesome skill to have.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
and no one has mentioned Daredevil?
Either turn in your geek cred cards, or admit that the Ben Affleck movie was so terrible that you've erased any mention of Daredevil from your minds....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Anyone can do this. You're probably even aware of it if you're married.
You arrive home after work, walk in through the garage and immediately know somethings different but you don't know what it is. You round the corner and your wife has bought a new rug... or cabinet... or something. Do you have ESP? No... the room "sounds" different. How do you know when someones creeping up behind you? Same thing...
I used to deer hunt with my father, and his tree stand was insanely high at over 70ft (he liked to think of himself as a sniper) and you could definitely hear the difference when you were the high in the trees than if you were in my stand which was at a much less terrifying 20ft off the ground.
$ echo locate
locate
$
IT WORKS
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
If you'e seen videos of him doing the supposed "riding bike down the street," he only gets a handful of meters, slowly, and it is a very painstaking bike ride. They even edit his video to show the more successful parts. I looked into this after seeing his TED talk -- while echolocation seemed pretty neat, it definitely seems like his foundation is exaggerating its efficacy. It definitely does something, his bike riding is awkward at best but I think it's talked up in an effort to encourage others to learn it as well.