How do we know?
↻ One of the pages with a moving picture
Scientists turn bat calls into pictures.
- A hunting bat gives out very high-pitched calls, too high for people to hear.
- The sound waves hit things, like a moth, and bounce back as echoes.
- The bat listens. How long each echo takes to come back tells it how far away the moth is.
- When it closes in on its prey, a bat may call up to 200 times a second!
Scientists record bat calls with special microphones. A computer turns each call into a picture of the sound, called a spectrogram.
Moths fight back. Some moths are covered in fuzzy scales that soak up as much as 85% of a bat call’s sound, so less echo bounces back to the bat. Other moths have ears that can hear bat calls.
Bats are not blind. They have small eyes but very sensitive vision, and they use echoes as well. At Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, from spring to fall, huge crowds of Brazilian free-tailed bats fly out of the cave every evening.
Wow number
85% Some moths are covered in fuzzy scales that soak up as much as 85% of a bat call’s sound, so less echo bounces back to the bat.
Myth or fact?
Bats are blind. Myth. Bats have small eyes but very sensitive vision.
Some moths have ears that can hear bat calls. Fact. These ears evolved to hear echolocation, the way bats use echoes to find things.
Think about it
Why do you think so many bats hunt at night instead of in the day?
Where in the world?
Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, USA where, from spring to fall, huge crowds of Brazilian free-tailed bats fly out of the cave every evening — 32.1479° N, 104.5567° W.
Where these facts come from
Every number on page 50, and who measured it
This page tells us that bat calls are too high for us to hear, and how fast bats call when they close in on a bug.
Bat sounds — Ohio State University's Museum of Biological Diversity
u.osu.edu/biomuseum/2017/08/09/bat-sounds
We checked it on 31 October 2026
This page explains how bat sounds bounce back, and how scientists record them with special microphones.
Echolocation — The U.S. National Park Service
nps.gov/subjects/bats/echolocation.htm
We checked it on 31 October 2026
This page tells us about the bats that fly out of Carlsbad Cavern every evening.
Bats — The U.S. National Park Service
nps.gov/cave/learn/nature/bats.htm
We checked it on 31 October 2026
This page tells us how fuzzy moths soak up bat sounds, and that some moths have ears.
Deaf Moths May Use Their ‘Fur’ To Avoid Hungry Bats — Smithsonian magazine, from the Smithsonian museums
smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/deaf-moths-may-use-their-fur-avoid-hungry-bats-180970799
We checked it on 31 October 2026
This page tells us that bats are not blind.
Are bats blind? — The U.S. Geological Survey, the government's Earth scientists
usgs.gov/faqs/are-bats-blind
We checked it on 31 October 2026
Has this changed?
How bats find food is not going to change.
Moths and bats keep changing too: moths evolve ways to hide from the calls, and bats keep hunting them.
Words from this page
- echo
- A sound that bounces off something and comes back.
- echolocation
- Using echoes to find things, the way a bat does.
- spectrogram
- A picture of a sound, made by a computer.
Try it!
Hear an echo, like a bat does.
1. With a grown-up, find a big flat wall outdoors, like a school building. 2. Stand close to it and clap once. Listen. 3. Now walk far back across an open space and clap again.
What happens: far away, you may hear a clap come back from the wall a moment later. That’s an echo, the same kind of sound a bat listens for.
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