This research by Whydo is supported by our readers. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links. Learn more
Are Bats Blind?
Let's Explore the World of Bats!
Bats are peculiar creatures with peculiar habits, such as occasional bloodsucking, sleeping upside down, and remaining awake all night. People see bats as supernatural, with vampires and even superheroes being associated with them. It’s no surprise, given their echolocation ability.
Have you also been wondering “Are Bats Blind?” Bats are arguably best recognized for their capacity to “see” with their ears. That, and their alleged blindness, which, according to legend, makes echolocation crucial for detecting and feasting on fruits, insects, and other small creatures. But what if the most basic truth about bats you’ve always been told isn’t true? What if “as blind as a bat” meant that you could see quite well?
Why Do They Say Blind as a Bat?
When someone has poor vision, we can refer to them as “blind as a bat.” When it comes to its origins, it belongs to the category of animal-derived idioms. This is a figure of speech based on the belief that bats have poor vision.
Because of their meandering flight style, people thought bats were blind before the twenty-first century. In reality, they employ a technique known as echolocation to explore huge distances. This notion about bats evolved into an idiom with several meanings. People now use it to describe someone who has bad eyesight or can’t see even the most obvious object.
To locate their prey, bats rely on a combination of hearing and sight. “Bat brains must constantly integrate two streams of input, gathered with two independent senses, to form a single vision of the environment,” according to a study on bat behavior. When it’s light, they use their sight to find food, but they rely on their hearing and echolocation when it’s dark.
Echolocation is a remarkable phenomenon in which bats fly about making clicking sounds. Their acute hearing allows them to detect echoes of this sound coming from insects, walls, and larger predators, indicating their location.
Because their eyes are small and have limited visual acuity, most smaller bats rely on echolocation to navigate and hunt, but larger bats have larger eyes and prefer to utilize their vision for these activities. Bats echolocate more in dark areas during dusk, but they also do so during the day.
Are All Bats or Most Bats Blind?
You may have described yourself as “blind as a bat” if you have poor eyesight or use glasses with a heavy prescription. You may have even been called this by someone else. The phrase is commonly used as an insult to characterize highly unobservant persons (despite the fact that this has nothing to do with their visual acuity!). So, when and why did individuals start adopting this idiom?
According to legend, Aristotle was one of the first to allude to bats’ poor eyesight when he said, “For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our mind to the things which are by nature most plain of all,” almost 2,000 years ago. This has evolved into the more common “blind as a bat” expression that we are familiar with today.
Because of their chaotic, random flight patterns, which created the impression that they couldn’t see where they were going, people thought bats were blind. While this isn’t true, there is evidence that bats have a great hearing to compensate for their lack of vision.
Can Bats See in the Dark?
Bats utilize echolocation for hunting in the dark, which means they use echoes of self-produced sounds bouncing off things to guide them. However, this does not rule out the possibility of bats seeing.
Bats are not blind. Bats are fascinating mammals with elaborate designs that have evolved into a unique species. From their eyes to their ears to their flying and roosting habits, they are truly unique.
We now know that the phrase “blind as a bat” was coined because people assumed these charming little vampire bats had poor vision. On the contrary, given the ability to “see” with their eyes and hearing, they could certainly fly circles past most other creatures. In fact, researchers suggest that, depending on the situation, bats hunt with their eyes rather than their ears.
Many fruit bats don’t echolocate at all since they prefer to drink nectar rather than hunt insects on trees. These animals have exceptionally keen visual abilities, with some even being able to see ultraviolet light.
In many species, vision and echolocation bats appear to act in tandem. The Egyptian fruit bat, little brown bat, Rousettus Aegyptiacus, and different species have excellent visual and echolocation (hearing) abilities.
Researchers found that bats echolocate more in the dark but continue to make clicking sounds even in bright light, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Current Biology. According to the researchers, they sped up echolocation when they landed after a flight, implying that they blend information from sight and sound to precisely judge distances.
Do Bats Have Good Eyesight?
In low-light situations, bats have exceptional vision. Bats can see better at night because they are nocturnal animals. Bats use their vision and other senses like smell and hearing to find prey or locate other objects or appropriate food sources. Fruit bats have large eyes that can see three times better than humans.
You might be wondering why bats are said to be blind. You’ll undoubtedly want to learn more about how bats use their eyesight and other senses. Bats, like all animals, rely on their eyes to see and seek food. The eyes of a bat are pretty different from those of a person. They don’t require the same variety of colors as humans do. They hunt at night, and colors are useless in the dark.
How Do Bats See?
Because bats are nocturnal hunters, their eyes have evolved to cope with low light. Rod photoreceptors densely pack their retinas, which help them see in the dark. They also have a talent called echolocation, which allows them to traverse their habitats using sound. Bats navigate and see with both their eyes and their hearing.
The majority of bat species have excellent visual capabilities. While their eyes perform best in low-light circumstances such as dawn or dusk, this does not mean they can’t see during the day or at night. They utilize their vision to keep an eye out for predators, navigate their flight courses, and detect and avoid colliding with objects, much like the rest of us.
In low-light situations, their vision may even be superior to ours. Our eyes’ retinas consist of cones and rods. These are photoreceptor cells that relay messages to our brains about what we see in terms of color and light. Echolocation, which bats employ in conjunction with their eyesight, is an extraordinary phenomenon that allows them to travel, hunt, and sleep safely.
Bats bounce sound off objects around them and receive information from the echoes that return to them by creating ultrasonic frequencies. For example, when a bat is hunting, it may create a feeding buzz. This occurs when a bat spots an insect (or something similar) and makes a quick sequence of calls to figure out its specific location before attacking.
To locate their prey, bats use a mix of hearing and sight. “Bat brains must constantly integrate two streams of input, gathered with two independent senses, to form a single vision of the environment,” according to a study on bat behavior. When it’s light, they use their sight to find food, but they rely on their hearing and echolocation when it’s dark.
Echolocation is a remarkable phenomenon in which bats fly about making clicking sounds. Their acute hearing allows them to detect echoes of this sound coming from insects, walls, and larger predators, indicating their location. Because their eyes are small and have limited visual acuity, most smaller bats rely on echolocation to navigate and hunt, but larger bats have larger eyes and prefer to utilize their vision for these activities compared to other animals. Bats echolocate more in dark areas, but they also do so during the day.
How Many Eyes Do Bat Species Have?
Let’s take a deeper look at bats’ visual talents now that we know how they use their hearing to improve their hunting ability. “All bats rely on sight to find food,” according to Science Focus, debunking the blindness myth. Because there are over 1,300 species of bats, each with different visual abilities, there is no single answer to how good bats’ vision is.
Because they hunt in different ways – some eat flowers, while others consume insects and blood – it’s only natural that they have different levels of vision and hearing to match their hunting techniques. So it’s reasonable to state that bats aren’t deafeningly deafening.
They have a kind of 20/20 super-vision sense thanks to their echolocation and finely tuned vision for dawn and twilight, which helps them home in on their prey while flying at high speeds. Bats can discover insects faster than any bird, thanks to echolocation. This distinguishes them from many other hunting species, all of which contribute to their ultimate objective of animal survival.
Are Bats Color Blind?
Bats are well-known for using their hearing to explore their surroundings. Still, few people realize that they also have excellent night and day vision. S-opsin, which detects blue and ultraviolet light, and L-opsin, which detects green and red light, are two light-sensitive proteins at the back of bats’ eyes that allow them to see in color.
However, many bat species lack one of these proteins and are unable to detect colors; in other words, they are colorblind. Some bat species like big brown bats in Central America and South America have lost their capacity to see blue-ultraviolet light and, consequently, their color vision.
These bats eat a variety of things, from insects to fruits to blood, and being able to discern colors could help them in various behaviors, such as hunting and foraging. Scientists may now investigate how one can lose a seemingly crucial trait at the molecular level thanks to the vision genes found in these bats.
Bats’ vision is often adapted to low-light conditions, allowing them to see especially effectively around twilight and dawn. Because most bats are nocturnal, this is likely something that evolved. Their color vision may not be as strong as ours. Still, their total vision in low light is significantly superior to ours — which makes sense considering we are diurnal creatures. Even during the day, some megabat species have greater vision than humans.
Can Bats See in the Daylight?
During the day, bats perceive in the same way as humans do. Light strikes the eye’s receptors, forming an image sent to the brain via nerve impulses. Easy. Because of how our eyes have evolved, seeing throughout the day is vital for us.
It’s also necessary because we’ve evolved to socialize and eat throughout the same ‘day’ period. We lose some clarity and can’t see as well when this brilliant full-spectrum light starts to fade. This isn’t a problem because we sleep at night anyway.
Bats are similar to humans in that they see with their eyes throughout the day and use them to fly, roost, and evade predators. On the other hand, bats have a slightly different combination of cells in their eyes. This allows them to see far more in low light than we do, which is ideal because this is when they wake up.
Final Words – Are Bats Blind?
Bats are fascinating mammals with elaborate designs that have evolved into unique species. From their eyes to their ears to their flying and roosting habits, they are truly unique.
Taken literally, the comment, “you are as blind as a bat,” should mean that you have excellent vision in low light conditions. However, it is usually meant to imply you have bad vision overall. This phrase perhaps originated from the fact that bats have rapid, erratic flight patterns that look like a blind person bumbling about.