Researchers have shown that Old World fruit bats – long thought to be non-echolocating species – use sound to help them navigate in the dark. Experiments showed that the fruit bats were making the noises not with their larynxes, but with their wing flaps.
Although this form of echolocation is not as sophisticated as in other bats, it does allow them to detect large solid surfaces, and could offer insight into how echolocation evolved in the early stages.
Original research paper published in Current Biology on December 4, 2014.
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