Just the other day we told you about Ben Underwood, the boy who could echolocate like a bat or a dolphin, and see without eyes. Now acoustic experts at the University of Alcala de Henares, in Spain, are working on a method of teaching ordinary people to use tongue clicks to echolocate as well. We can all be superheroes!According to lead researcher Juan Antonio Martinez, 2 hours per day for a couple of weeks is all it should take for you to learn to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you. You just have to learn to make special clicks with your tongue and palate - clicks work well because don’t require exhalation, so you can click and breathe at same time. Then the trick is to recognize slight changes in sound of clicks’ echoes depending on what objects are nearby.
The researchers are still developing their teaching methods, but they're confident it should be perfected soon, which means that blind folks may not have to rely on gadgets and kindly dogs too much for much longer.
Source: Wired
