Demystified / Science

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Bats are idiosyncratic creatures, with habits that humans find incredibly odd—like occasional bloodsucking, sleeping upside down, and staying up all night. We characterize bats as supernatural, associating them with vampires and even superheroes. With their talent for echolocation, that’s no surprise. It’s for that ability to “see” with their ears that bats are perhaps most well known—that, and their supposed blindness, which (as the story goes) makes echolocation necessary for finding and feeding on fruits and insects and other small animals. But what if the most basic truth you’ve always been told about bats was false? What if being “as blind as a bat” just meant, well, being able to see perfectly well?

Contrary to what most people believe, bats are generally not blind at all and in fact are believed to have eyesight keener than that of most humans. The misconception that bats are blind comes from their nocturnal nature and enhanced hearing abilities. Because they hunt mostly in the dead of night, when lighting conditions are, of course, very dark, bats rely on echolocation to pinpoint exact locations of prey. This ability does not, however, require or have any connection to blindness. Instead, the genetic mutations that evolved the powers of echolocation in bats likely surfaced as they aided the animals in the darkness. A bat’s eyes, far from useless, are attuned to low-light conditions to better aid in finding prey and are enhanced by their super hearing power.

Being as blind as a bat doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?