Echolocation Forces Poor Bats to Nosedive Into Metal [Video]

It ain’t easy being a bat, what with hanging the wrong way up, and extinction threats . But fascinating research shows they’re also helpless against their innate echolocation sense, which makes them try and drink from metallic sheets they detect as still water.

The above video from Nature illustrates new findings in regards to the navigational capabilities of the little winged guys. It turns out bats rely enormously on their ability to echolocate, using it to achieve a sweeping understanding of their surroundings-not just for hunting bugs.

Researchers discovered this after they experimented with young and captured bats, never before exposed to bodies of water. Despite their nature naïvety, the bats instinctively (and mistakenly) identified smooth metallic sheets as water, and attempted to dive into them for a drink. Textured surfaces, alternatively, were ignored. This shows that a bat’s ability to map out its environment is a built-in feature-not one learned with experience. That’s some serious hardware. [ PopSci ]

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This post is tagged: bodies of water, extinction, hunting, navigational capabilities, surroundings, textured surfaces, wrong way