How do bats use echo location?

Answer 1

Bats produce high frequency tones within their throats that deflect off of every object around them. They have highly attuned hearing that can use the reflections of these sounds to determine the location of other objects, in particular food, predators and their general environment.

Answer 2

The human auditory organs are very highly developed; yet, there are animals that can hear even better than we can. Notable among these animals are bats. They emit high-frequency sound waves and detect the reflected sounds (echoes) from surrounding objects. Their sense of hearing is so acute that they can obtain information from echoes which is in many ways as detailed as the information we can obtain with our sense of sight. The many different species of bats utilize echoes in various ways. The Vespertilionidae family of bats emit short chirps as they fly. The chirps last about (3 msec) with a time interval between chirps of about 70 msec. Each chirp starts at a frequency of about and falls to about at the end. (The ears of bats, of course, respond to these high frequencies.) The silent interval between chirps allows the bat to detect the weak echo without interference from the primary chirp. Presumably the interval between the chirp and the return echo allows the bat to determine its distance from the object. It is also possible that differences in the frequency content of the chirp and the echo allow the bat to estimate the size of the object (see Exercise 12-5). With a spacing between chirps of 70 msec, an echo from an object as far as 11.5 m can be detected before the next chirp. As the bat comes closer to the object (such as an obstacle or an insect), both the duration of and the spacing between chirps decrease, allowing the bat to localize the object more accurately. In the final approach to the object, the duration of the chirps is only about 0.3 msec, and the spacing between them is about 5 msec.