Echolocation
Echolocation
It was found out in the 1930s that bats use high pitched sounds like a natural sonar to locate food and navigate. When these sounds bounce off of objects bats are capable of listening to these echoes and are able to judge distance, movement and size of all objects in their path.
Bat Echolocation Fun Facts
- Humans generally can not hear the high pitched sounds that bats make.
- Some bats send echolocation sounds though their nose but most bats use their mouth.
- Most fruit bats use eyesight and smell for finding food not echolocation. (Of course fruit bat's food is generally not moving.)
- Amazingly even when thousands of bats are flying out of a cave they can still use their echolocation with all the noise around.
Different species of bats use different patterns of echolocation frequencies to find food and navigate. This allows scientists to use a detector like the Anabat bat detector to record echolocation patterns for use in identifying different bat species at night and inside dark caves. At Carlsbad Caverns National Park an Anabat bat detector is used to identify which bat species live in an around the caves, and when specific species arrive at Carlsbad Caverns in the Spring and leave in the Fall. See the different echolocation patterns of bats shown to the right.
Lake Mead NRA Echolocation Photo
Wind Cave National Park Ecolocation Drawing
Echolocation Pattern of Mexican Free-tail Bat
Recorded at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
Echolocation Pattern of Fringed Myotis Bat
Recorded at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
Echolocation Pattern of Cave Myotis Bat
Recorded at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
