Once upon a time, people assumed that bats were blind, mainly because of their beady little eyes and nocturnal lifestyle. The discovery that bats "see" prey using echolocation did nothing to dispel that myth. First of all, many fruit bats have huge soulful eyes you could get lost in.
Second, insect-eating bats may only have "pinhole" eyes but they can see, science has proven. The assumption had been that bats' sonar skills only apply to hunting at short distances, not long-distance navigation. Is that so? Now the intrepid bats team at Tel Aviv University has demonstrated that wild Kuhl's pipistrelle microbats ( Pipistrellus kuhlii ) driven a few kilometers from the roost can find their way home with their eyes closed.
They apparently achieve this by creating sonar-based maps in their little heads. Microbats are usually insectivores. They weigh about the same as a cigarette but average a decent wingspan of 25 centimeters (9.
8 inches). Flying foxes, which are fruit bats, can weigh as much as nine cartons of cigarettes and reach almost 2 meters in wingspan. The experiments on navigation in the Kuhl's pipistrelle by Aya Goldshtein, Lee Harten, Prof.
Yossi Yovel and colleagues were described in the latest journal of Science . How does one investigate what bats can do with their eyes closed? By isolating auditory input and frustrating other sensory input, including by blindfolding them. Since the blindfolded bats made it home, the team concluded that they were achieving "acoustic c.
