How to listen to bats?

Bats navigate in the dark by producing sounds, through their mouth (or nose) and listening for the echos that bounce back from their surroundings. This is called Echolocation, and is much like how a submarine uses sonar.

Bats produce echolocation calls several times a second, and speed up at they get closer to their prey. The sound they produce is mostly beyond the range of human hearing which ranges from 20 to 20,000 cycles per second (20Hz to 20kHz). However the larger bats, especially Noctules, can produce calls as low as 17kHz, and hence some people can just hear them. Unfortunately many people lose the highest frequencies of their hearing as they get older, and this happens more quickly in men than women.

Hence if you want to listen to most bats you will need a bat detector to convert their high frequency echolocation into sound you can hear.

In this section we have advice on:

• Types of Bat Detector
• Choosing a Bat Detector
• Using your Bat Detector