BATS

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Blind as a bat?, not true, bats have very good eyesight but like us they can't see very well in the dark. To overcome this problem bats have developed a type of radar location, they send out a series of ultrasonic sounds which bounce off any objects in front of them, the bats sensitive ears pick up the sound bouncing back and they can tell what is in front of them.

The sounds a bat emits are actually very loud, so loud that it could damage their delicate hearing, so to solve this problem when a bat calls a muscle in the ear closes and this protects the hearing.

Because the sound is ultrasonic we cannot hear it, a bat detector picks up the sounds bats make and converts them to a frequency we can hear.

The sounds on the audio player are from a bat detector and show some of the calls bats make.

Photos take in Reddish Vale, Fri 27/7/07