Buzz
Bats are far from being blind, despite what many myths suggest. While vision plays a role in their daily lives, echolocation takes precedence when it comes to navigation and hunting. By emitting high-pitched sounds and listening to the echoes that bounce off objects, bats create a mental map of their surroundings. Recent studies have demonstrated that their ability to locate water bodies is partly instinctual.
Many bat species live in large colonies, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, often sharing the same cave before they take flight in enormous groups. With so many bats making sounds at once, it raises a simple question: How do they avoid getting overwhelmed by each other's calls?
There are several strategies that help with this. For example, biologist John D. Altringham explains that the call of the North and South American moustached bat is so faint that it’s unlikely for other bats to hear it. Because the sound is so quiet, nearby moustached bats simply disregard it, allowing them to hunt without being distracted by their companions.
Additionally, Gareth Jones and Marc W. Holderid from the University of Bristol have discovered that, across most species, individual bats use different call lengths to suit various environments. When flying in open spaces, bats tend to produce longer calls, which travel farther. On the other hand, when in more crowded areas, shorter calls are favored as they only bounce back over a smaller distance, reducing interference from surrounding noises—including the sonar of other bats.
For further details on bat echolocation and its evolution, check out this story.
