Dec. 12, 2013 — Blessed with the power of echolocation -- reflected sound -- bats rule the night skies. There are more than 1,000 species of these echolocating night creatures, compared with just 80 species of non-echolocating nocturnal birds. And while it seems that echolocation works together with normal vision to give bats an evolutionary edge, nobody knows exactly how.
Now Dr. Arjan Boonman and Dr. Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology suggest that bats use vision to keep track of where they're going and echolocation to hunt tiny insects that most nocturnal predators can't see. The findings, published in Frontiers in Physiology, add to our scientific understanding of sensory evolution.
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