In Tel Aviv, Israel, you might be privy to a strange sight: bats darting from tree branch to tree branch in broad daylight. These Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus), unlike most other species of bats, are diurnal and have great vision. But they aren’t just using their eyesight as they forage for ripe fruit, researchers reported April 11 in Current Biology; these fruit bats are echolocating during the day.
Until recently, researchers thought that Egyptian fruit bats could only echolocate in dark caves. But a few years ago, researchers discovered that the bats could echolocate outside at night and in dimly-lit lab settings.
For two years, photographer Yuval Barkai took thousands of photos of the bats on their daily excursions around Tel Aviv. Wanting to learn more about what the animals were doing as they foraged, Barkai approached Yossi Yovel, a coauthor on the earlier paper and a biologist at ...
