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I Can Hear Bats Squeaking—Can You?

phi23

phi23

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 19, 2002
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511
Is it unusual that I can hear bats squeaking? I've always been able to hear them - and I know its bats because I only ever hear them when I see them flying around - in fact I hear them before I see them.
I noticed bats squeaking last night while out walking between some country pubs and mentioned it to my friends, only they couldn't hear them and they swore that the sounds bats make are well beyond human hearing.
Do I have some kind of spectacularly mundane superpower? Does anyone else hear bats?
 
I hear them too. I guess they make squeaks at different frequencies depending on what they're up to... you only need to watch any animal documentary about bats, whenever they're in a cave all you can hear is them shrieking.
 
My kids have always said they can hear them , maybe a lot of people lose the ability wheh they are older,I think I could when I was a kid but not now. You can get bat detectors if you want to hear them and can't , I know a few people whp keep rats that have them so they can hear all the many usually inaudible sounds they make .
 
i can hear em too... but itts the "just flying around" sounds which are lower and not the "im gon'a get this moth" ones which are higher
 
Bat audio-location squeaks are at the top end (frequency-wise) of human hearing.

Children generally can hear them, but as they get older the upper frequency limit drops, so most adults can't hear them.

(No doubt a Google would provide facts and figures.)
 
Phew, I'm glad its not just me! I did do a cursory google on the subject but didn't find any good answers.

Hmm... I have the hearing of a child :D
 
I expect the key word there is 'typically' - what you hear as a 'squeak' is a 'grunt' to a bat.
 
I can hear bats too, and I thought (after those Motorhead gigs in my teens) that my hearing was not that good any more. So I'm glad I can still hear them.

It's only when they start scratching on the window asking to come in that I'll start to worry...
 
hmm! the new catchphrase of the next film " i hear bats squeaking!" :D (only joking!)

not that i managed to hear bats squeaking sub audiorty
so what is it like then?
 
I can hear bats squeak and used to sit out with my kids to listen to them years ago.

The ex couldn't hear them and claimed I was making it all up! :rolleyes:

In my experience, some people can & some can't hear them.
 
I was doing a talk at a local historic house by candlelight which was nice and atmospheric. About halfway through I was startled to hear an angry chittering above my head. It sounded like a squirrel. I looked up at the window alcove. Clinging to the draperies was a bat giving me a piece of his tiny mammalian mind. "Oh DO be quiet!" I said severely. The bat subsided and there wasn't a chirp the rest of the evening.




I was a reference librarian in a previous life.
 
giant bats

Talking of bats, how big do bats grow--does anybody know?

Thanks Barbara
 
I can hear bats too :)

It seems that the myth that humans can't hear bats is just that... they're not blind either, and rarely attack women with long hair.

Jane.
 
Re: giant bats

barbara green said:
Talking of bats, how big do bats grow--does anybody know?

Thanks Barbara
Click to expand...

i think the fruit bat is the biggest bat, as big in the body as a small cat... in Uk, more mouse like.... tho one night commin home to our boat the wife and i saw what we thought was a pigeon on a branch which turned out not the be a perched pigeon but a bat hanging on a lower branch!.... we looked it up and couldunt find what it might have been.!
 
Aged 9, I gave an enthusiastic class talk about bats, having read all about them in an encyclopaedia at home.

When I described a huge exotic species called the 'Flying Fox' my talk was rudely halted by the teacher and I was publicly berated for 'making things up'. :(

So I know for sure that
a. certain bats can grow as big as foxes. :)
b. that teacher was a spiteful, ignorant old bitch.:mad:

I still like bats though.
 
escargot said:
Aged 9, I gave an enthusiastic class talk about bats, having read all about them in an encyclopaedia at home.

When I described a huge exotic species called the 'Flying Fox' my talk was rudely halted by the teacher and I was publicly berated for 'making things up'. :(

So I know for sure that
a. certain bats can grow as big as foxes. :)
b. that teacher was a spiteful, ignorant old bitch.:mad:

I still like bats though.
Click to expand...

the fruit bat is known as the "flying fox"...cos its got a foxy face and is big... and ur teacher was an ignorant cow.
 
I hear night-time squeaking too... though aren't there some moths that squeak too? Probably bats I can hear, cos we do get quite a few flying round the house, although strangely enough I never remember hearing them when I was a kid.

Also if you hear it nearer the ground it could be shrews.
 
I can hear bats too. When I point this out during evening p1ss-ups round the barbeque, most people can't hear them...

And shrews.

And those bloody cat/dog scarers that people put in their gardens... drive me nuts. I can even hear them thru' the headphones whilst I'm mowing!:eek:
 
In Bristol Zoo you can walk through the fruit bat enclosure-it has doors made of hanging heavy strips of polythene/plastic. Its cool,the bats fly round your head.
 
I'm constantly amazed at the number of bats that are around. I mean, I know that they are protected and everything, but, living in the middle of the urban sprawl that is Hull, we see them almost everywhere! Where do they roost and how come they are clever enough to avoid the murderous kids that would undoubtedly enjoy harming them?

Anyway, I'm grateful for such things and enjoy watching the bats fly around the garden on a summer evening. :)
 
Anyone heard a bat squeek? I have just done the sound fx for our Panto ' Frankenstein, the panto' by Donald Swan, which calls for bats squeeking. Couldn't find a single bat squeek anywhere, not on fx cds or http://www.findsound" (handy source online). So I used rat noises and lifted their pitch, which kept the director happy. I swear I have heard pipistrelles squeeking around my place, but people will not believe me, saying their sounds are above hearing range. I think that only applies to their 'radar' pulses. Anyone got good ears? And aren't bats protected and have to be re-located?
 
yes i can hear thier flying along squeeks... they are within normal hearing range , a sort of chink chink... people who say u cant hear it havent listended.
 
Yes, I've heard bats sqeak too.
Not very loud, high-pitched, a feeling that it's almost at the limit of my hearing, and a slightly weird sensation - a feeling in the ears - if there's a lot of them. Which there are, in summer, where I live.
 
For a long time I've suspected that the high pitched noises I can hear at night is bats using their echo-location, but being dark I've never been able to see them to confirm my idea. Finally the other night I was outside with a torch and heard the familiar noise and was able to get a look at the little buggers and sure enough there were two little microbats! According to Wikipedia human hearing overlaps slightly with microbats echolocation, and I've always been able to hear other high pitched noises, such as the devices people put on their cars to scare off kangaroos (don't know what the roos think of them but they annoy me) and those new "silent" ringtones. Also in the old days before computer monitors automatically went into standby, I could always hear if one had been left on when the computer had been switched off, as they let out a very annoying whine. Can anyone else hear bats?
 
I voted "Yes" on the grounds that some people probably can, although I'm NOT one of them.

But I would have preferred a "Maybe" option.
 
Bats flit around my garden most evenings, but neither Mrs ASCII nor I have ever heard a squeak out of them.
 
Yup, I have often heard them. They have to be quite close though, and I expect the type/size of bat comes into it, as Pietro says.
 
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