Echolocation

Why do bats slam into buildings? Have bats been blind for many years people just haven’t taken the time to study their eyes? According to the article, “Bats Slam into Buildings because they can’t ‘see’ them”, written by Bruno Martin the reason bats are running into these buildings is because their echolocation isn’t picking up these smooth surface buildings.

The reason I decided to read this particular article is because you don’t really hear a lot of research on bats, so when I seen this article I was surprised it was even there. Scientist do studies on all types of animals, animals I’ve never heard off, so it’s really cool when they do a research on an animal you know of, but not enough to answer ‘Why bats run into buildings?’

In the article listed above, they explain how bats depend on their echolocation to be able to get around. When they are flying and they send out their echolocation they don’t get signals back that their is a building there until it is too late so bats will try to hurry and dodge the huge building right in front of them but unfortunately they are end up hitting the building anyways. Zoologist Stefan “Greif and his colleagues tested the echolocation of 21 wild-caught greater mouse-eared bats (Myotis myotis) in the lab. The researchers placed a featureless metal plate on a side wall at the end of a flight tunnel. The bats interpreted the smooth surface — but not the adjacent, felt-covered walls — as a clear flight path.” (Martin, 2017) Stated in the article. An average of about twenty trials was performed for each bat and nineteen of the bats crashed into the walls at least once. This was to test if a vertical “glass” object had an affect, but later in 2010 Mr. Greif wanted to see if the bats had the same effect to a horizontal facing object and if it would react the same way as the vertical test. When the researches put this horizontal facing glass objects in front of the bats, the bats would go up to it expecting there to be water there for them to drink. The reason for the bats certain behaviour is because bats usually encounter lakes and ponds, which are reflective, or mirror like. So when the horizontal glass was put in front of them the bats thought it was another lake or pond.

I think it's very interesting that the vertical mirror like object and the horizontal mirror like object gave us different results on if the bat would be able to see them or not. I thought that the bat would run into the horizontal glass just the same as the vertical one, but realizing why the bats react to the horizontal mirror they way they did makes total sense.

Zoologist Stefan Greif stated in the article that if these types of building start to become a real big problem to the bats that there are ways we can prevent these bats from hitting these buildings. All humans would have to do is avoid using smooth types of material on buildings and instead replace them with “the use of acoustic deterrents — small bundles of speakers that emit ultrasound near buildings in these ecologically important sites, says Greif. “We have to be realistic.””(Martin, 2017) mentioned in the article.

That's all on the article, “Bats slam into buildings because they can’t ‘see’ them”, written by Bruno Martin. I am glad I chose to read this article because I really did learn something new and interesting about echolocation, bats, and the effect of reflective objects that takes place in the bat's life.

References

Martin, Bruno. "Bats Slam Into Buildings Because They Can't 'See' Them." Naturenews, 2017, http://www.nature.com/news/bats-slam-into-buildings-because-they-can-t-see-them-1.22583.