Bat Facts

With Halloween quickly approaching, I thought it would be fun to take some time to appreciate bats. Amazing animals!

More like this

BATS use sonar, or echolocation, to navigate complex environments, and also to forage and then accurately pinpoint the flying insects on which they prey. Insects in turn have evolved various counter-measures to evade capture. Some species have ears which are in tune to the echolocation signals,…
Impressionists are a mainstay of British comedy, with the likes of Rory Bremner and Alistair MacGowan uncannily mimicking the voices of celebrities and politicians. Now, biologists have found that tiger moths impersonate each other too, and they do so to avoid the jaws of bats. Some creatures…
Bats view the world in echoes, timing the reflections of their own ultrasonic calls to navigate and hunt. This biological sonar, or echolocation, has made them masters of the night sky; it's so sensitive that some species take moths and other insects on the wing, while others pluck spiders from…
When food is precious, animals can resort to strange behaviours in order to satisfy their hunger. Take the great tit. Its usual diet of insects and creepy-crawlies is harder to come by in winter. But in one Hungarian cave, great tits, ever the opportunists, have learned to exploit a rich and…