How Bats Find Their Way In The Dark

People have always been puzzled by how bats see small insects in the dark

, and how they avoid bumping into things as they fly around in the dark. Two hundred years ago an Italian, called the Abbe Spallanzani, made an experiment to find how they did it. He caught a lot of bats and covered their eyes with wax so they could not see. Then he let them loose in a room in which many bells were hanging on wires. If a bat touched a wire the bell would ring. But the bats flew to and fro in the room and avoided all the wires. The Abbe was puzzled. He was sure only that bats had some special sense. This special sense was only recently discovered when scientists found out that bats hear their way about. Their eyes are small and weak, but their ears are more powerful than those of any other creature. As bats fly about they squeak. The sounds echo or bounce back from an object and are picked up by the bat's ears. We can hear a loud echo, but bats can hear the tiniest echo. They can hear the echo which comes back from a wire or a flying beetle. And a bat can tell exactly where the echo is coming from. The squeak of a bat is so highpitched that few human beings can hear it. But to a bat it is like shining a flashlight ahead. It is just as if it could see with sound. Ships use a method very much like this to spot enemy submarines. It is called sonar. You can read about sonar in a separate article

How Bats Find Their Way In The Dark

By: David Bunch

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