Now You Know: Bats

Through the course of conversation at dinner with my family last night, I uncovered a few glaring misconceptions that some of my family members had. This is through no fault of their own; not everyone watches the Discovery Channel. Below is the only one I care to address today.

Misconception: Bats are blind.
Fact: Bats are not blind. Misconception #1 is a common one. It is a reasonable assumption to make for cave dwelling creatures with echolocation capabilities. By that same token of logic, dolphins also ought to be blind because they live in the dark ocean and also have echolocation. The truth is that not all bats echolocate. There is a suborder of the bat family, informally referred to as Megabats (how cool is that?), that relies on visual acuity to identify their food -- primarily inanimate fruits and flower nectar. The echolocating suborder, Microbats, are also capable of seeing, but rely more on sound than sight when targeting highly mobile prey in the darkness of night. There is a species in Belize that actually catches fish (video).

We had a bat in our garage for a few nights.