Some bat species unable to use sonar to sense their environment can instead navigate using echoes from clicking their wings — possibly an early, crude form of echolocation.
A team led by Arjan Boonman and Yossi Yovel at Tel Aviv University in Israel studied three species of wild, non-echolocating Old World fruit bat (pictured is Cynopterus brachyotis). They found that individuals of two species emitted clicks more frequently in the dark than in the light, and could find and land on large objects, although they failed to detect small obstacles. When the researchers taped the bats' wings, the clicking stopped, but the exact clicking mechanism could not be determined.
The authors suggest that much can be learned about the evolution of echolocation from these fruit bats.
Curr. Biol. http://doi.org/xmr (2014)
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Some bats click wings to navigate. Nature 516, 147 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/516147d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/516147d
