Not Really Blind as Bats (IMAGE)

SMBE Journals (Molecular Biology and Evolution and Genome Biology and Evolution)

Not Really Blind as Bats

Caption

The popular expression of being "blind as a bat" really doesn't hold true. Some bats that have the most advanced type of echolocation appear to have traded UV vision for exquisite hearing, and all bats that do not echolocate but live in caves have also lost UV vision. This suggests that not all bats are blind but some certainly have selected other senses over vision.

Credit

Professor Gareth Jones

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