Posted by Deiussum on March 21, 2000 at 20:33:27:
In Reply to: Primarily semantics (text) posted by Proud Blade on March 21, 2000 at 19:18:23:
I know this is way off-topic, but I can't help myself. :) I had a Mammology professor who is crazy about bats and has published studies on them so I learned more than just a little about bat echolocation.
While many bats have highly evolved echolocation abilities, it doesn't take away the importance of vision and smell in hunting down prey. In fact, many bats do not use echolocation at all or have poorly developed echolocation abilities.
There are also two primary types of echolocation. FM calls and CF calls.
FM calls are useful for bats to determine the size of an object while CF calls are used to determine the distance. While some use both types of calls, many only use one, thus they must also rely heavily on vision and smell to determine the info that their particular flavor echolocation cannot give them.
I think a bat-like race in CF could be fun. (Note my attempt to add something CF-related...) :)