Boston's Best Bat Removal

How Do Bats Communicate?

Few people interact with bats on a regular basis and most people want to keep it that way. This is a smart decision, as bats can carry a range of diseases, such as rabies or histoplasmosis. The downside of not interacting with bats frequently means that it can be hard to understand how they communicate.

Most people recognize that bats do not talk like humans do. That being said, given that they frequently live in colonies, they must have a system of communication. But what is it?

Echolocation Is Crucial for Bats

The main method that bats use to communicate as well as to see their surroundings is echolocation. Keep in mind that bats can also see and actually have good vision, including the ability to see in the dark. The myth that they are blind is simply a myth. In reality, they can see but they adapted echolocation as a more efficient and effective method of finding their surroundings. Echolocation provides more detail on distance, location, size, and shape than their eyes would.

What Is Echolocation?

With echolocation, bats emit sounds that are at a very high frequency. Humans can only hear some of these sounds. Bats then pay attention to how long it takes for the sounds to echo back to them and use that information to figure out how far away they are. Other animals that use echolocation include dolphins, killer whales, and certain birds.

Most people think of bats using echolocation to get to know their surroundings, but it is also part of their communication with each other.

Echolocation Means that Bats Communicate with their Mouth and Ears

If you want to put how bats communicate using echolocation in simple terms, you can. They emit the sounds for the echolocation with their noses or mouths. They use their ears to hear the response.

In this way, they are like us as we use our mouths and ears to communicate. The big differences are that some species also use their noses to emit the sounds and that they also use echolocation to "see" their surroundings and enhance their vision.

They Also Make Other Sounds

As they roost in their colonies, bats also make a lot of noises. This partly lets them communicate with the rest of their colony and it partly lets them use echolocation to confirm where everything and everyone is.

Their Sounds Are Highly Varied

Based on research from experts, we know that bats produce a variety of sounds. They use different sounds for different purposes, such as a male mating call versus an alert of danger versus a sound to mark territory. Interestingly enough, while we can't hear all the sounds that bats make, the human ear can typically distinguish the tone of a male bat from the tone of a female bat.

Scientists who have researched bats say that their calls tend to feature 15 to 20 syllables. These syllables can include chirps, songs, and clicks. To put this in perspective, humans are the only other mammals that can create such complex vocal sequences.

On top of that, there are variations in the sounds that bats make based on the species. There are even individual differences and differences between families. For example, each male bat will have a slightly different song that they "sing" during courtship.

The Frequencies Bats Use

As mentioned, we can hear some bat sounds but humans cannot hear most of the sounds that bats make. To put this in perspective, consider that human ears can typically hear frequencies from 20 to 20,000 waves per second. Bats regularly communicate at frequencies more than five times as high, more than 100,000 waves per second.

Part of the reason bats tend to use higher frequencies is that they provide them with more information. Essentially, using a higher frequency for echolocation gives bats more detail about their surroundings than they would get with lower frequencies.

While we cannot hear these sounds, scientists have special gear that can pick them up. This professional equipment can let us adapt the sounds in a way that we can hear, or you can simply see the frequencies on a screen and know the equipment recorded bat sounds.

Given how complex bat communication can be with such long calls or songs, scientists are very interested in learning more about it.