CAMILO LOPEZ-AGUIRRE & LAURA A. B. WILSON, THE CONVERSATION 7 MARCH 2021 Scientists have found another piece in the puzzle of how echolocation evolved in bats, moving closer to solving a decades-long evolutionary mystery. All bats - apart from the fruit bats of the family Pteropodidae (also called flying foxes) - can "echolocate" by using high-pitched sounds to navigate at night.
Current Biology, has shown how the capability for sophisticated echolocation not only evolved multiple times in groups of bats, but also that it never evolved in fruit bats. The remarkable sounds of bats To navigate using echolocation, bats produce high-frequency calls in their larynx (voice box) and emit these through their nose or mouth. These calls, usually made at higher frequencies than humans can hear, echo off objects and bounce back.