By Helen BriggsBBC News
8 September 2017
Modern buildings with large
expanses of glass or mirrored surfaces are "potentially dangerous"
for bats, research suggests.
Scientists are calling for
monitoring of the risks, particularly in areas where bats congregate in large
numbers.
Bats have a remarkable ability to
fly at high speeds in the dark avoiding natural hazards such as trees.
Yet, smooth, vertical surfaces
such as glass windows create a "blind spot" for the flying mammals, a
study shows.
"Bats predominately rely on
their echolocation system to forage, orientate, and navigate," says a team
led by Dr Stefan Greif of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology near Munich
in Germany.
"We found that bats can
mistake smooth, vertical surfaces as clear flight paths, repeatedly colliding
with them, likely as a result of their acoustic mirror properties."
Collision risk
Bats use echolocation to detect
obstacles in flight, find their way into roosts and forage for food.
As they fly, they make calls and
listen to the returning echoes to build up a sonic map of their surroundings.
Bats can flit through natural
obstacles, such as forests, which return some echo back to them.
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