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I Can Hear Bats Squeaking—Can You?

I regularly hear them but only the one type (Daubenton's). Fishing late into the long summer evenings provides lots of time to watch bats especially where i live. I love watching bats its incredible how close they will fly around you. Best viewing when its dark or getting dark is to find a bridge over a canal or river that has some sort of lighting on or around it. The lights attract the moths and also help to see the bats. You can also pick electronic devices that will locate the bats sounds and identify the type of bat.
 
I used to take my kids out in the country to where there were lots of bats. If you pick your time and place, you can stand still enough for tiny insects to gather above your head, (probably thinking you're a horse or cow) and this will attract the bats. They will then swoop around you battily. Great fun. 8)
 
As kids, we would throw handfuls of sand into the air --
bats would think the sand was a swarm of insects and
fly into the midst of it.
Their squeaks were clearly audible.
(I'm sure it was cussing us out
for getting a mouthful of dust!) :oops:

TVgeek
 
You can also pick electronic devices that will locate the bats sounds and identify the type of bat.
Click to expand...

they're called bat detectors... at least that's what the environmentalist i used to work with said... also said it gets a laugh every time :D
 
I think it's to do with age. There was a chap who invented a thing that made a very high pitch noise that can be positioned in shopping centres, bus stops and the like. The sound was inaudible to anyone over 20 or so but to teenagers it was really irritating and stopped them hanging around.

I hate the sound of TV's that are on but have no picture, not white noise but that high pitched hum.
 
"The range of hearing for a healthy young person is 20 to 20,000 hertz. The hearing range of humans gets worse with age. People lose the ability to hear sounds of high frequency as they get older. The highest frequency that a normal middle-aged adult can hear is only 12-14 kilohertz. "

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ChrisDAmbrose.shtml

Details of bat detectors:

http://www.londonbats.org.uk/batdets.htm

Noctule bats seem to have the lowest frequency - 20 Khz which will just hit the upper range of sime humans.
But things are actually a lot more complex than just saying that a species has one squeak range:

http://www.worlddeer.org/britishbats/ot ... nting.html
 
there was this discussion on another thread some time ago. I could until a year or two back hear bats squeek, mostly pipistrelles, but I'm sure no-one can hear their 'radar' which is a stream of pulses around 40 kz if i remember. Now my hearing has deteriorated to below around 12-14 kz partly due to ancient old age and no doubt from playing drums for a lifetime! (Cymbals are the worse offenders).
 
thankyou for the welcome back :D been pretty busy and spent a lot of time messing with myspace and my own website which I'm still adding to. Nice to read the board again though!
 
I voted no as I have never heard a bat as far as I know.

However I proved to my Biology teacher a few years ago (a few being 22 years) that I could detect a dog whistle. Its like a very faint blowing between the teeth kind of whistle.
 
Well, I can hear bats squeaking but not their radar. I was in a place one where the bats would keep flying around your head. I knew they wouldn´t hit me, but it still had me duck every time they came near.
 
chriswsm said:
However I proved to my Biology teacher a few years ago (a few being 22 years) that I could detect a dog whistle. Its like a very faint blowing between the teeth kind of whistle.
Click to expand...
Can you still do it? Your audible range normally gets smaller over time, losing the upper and lower frequencies, but I'd be curious to know whether you can still hear the dog whistle after 22 years.
 
Anome_ said:
I'd be curious to know whether you can still hear the dog whistle after 22 years.
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I didn't even know dogs could whistle ... I've heard a wolf whistle though, boom-boom!
:madeyes:
 
Not sure if I could now, but I used to be able to hear bats squeek.

Also - to my shame - I totally believed the old wives tales about the invulnerability of bats to gunfire (quick reactions and super radar) and attempted to show a friend that they couldn't be hurt. Whoops........... :(

I look out for them now to make up for it :oops:
 
AMPHIARAUS said:
Not sure if I could now, but I used to be able to hear bats squeek.
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Likewise, although don't I don't know if its loss of the upper range of hearing with age or because there aren't any bats nearby...
 
Just been reading my Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald British Bats book where he talks about the sounds bats make and laments that bats hearing dimishes with age, although some people can't hear them ever.

So time to resurrect this ancient thread!

Who here is a bat listener?

I, sadly am not although I can hear the cat scarers mentioned earlier so maybe I just haven't tried listening? :thought: I am going to give it a go tonight.
 
I used to be able to hear bats hunting when I was younger, sadly I can't any more. Bats make an angry chattering when disturbed in their roosts, and I can still hear that. At the edge of hearing I can sometimes hear rodents squeaking somewhere, could be roosting bats, or mice.
 
I don't think I've ever been able to hear bats squeak but I have two hearing aids now so perhaps my hearing never was good enough for that.
I was sitting outside about 21:00 yesterday with my bat detector module plugged into my phone. All it picked up was a pipistrelle or two.
 
I used to hear and see bats a lot. In the last 5 years in my current flat I've seen them but not heard them. Probably due to age but also possibly a different sort of bat, I am no expert. It used to feel like the sound came in through my ears but was registering somewhere at the back of my head which felt like it was vibrating. I miss the cheery squirts of noise.
 
Min Bannister said:
Just been reading my Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald British Bats book where he talks about the sounds bats make and laments that bats hearing dimishes with age, although some people can't hear them ever.

So time to resurrect this ancient thread!

Who here is a bat listener?

I, sadly am not although I can hear the cat scarers mentioned earlier so maybe I just haven't tried listening? :thought: I am going to give it a go tonight.
Click to expand...
I was when I was a kid. We didn't have bats around but my dad tried to train the dogs with a dog whistle, he was already partially deaf, and he got upset that my brother and I were trying to help by telling the dogs what each signal meant when he blew the whistle. He wasn't showing them, just expected them to know what the tones meant. I think he was drunk. Any way, he made us prove we could hear the whistle and then gave up on using it.
 
Coal said:
Used to be able to, probably until I was in my late '30's. The lad can hear them perfectly well.
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I could too, up until I got an ear infection in my late 30s. Now I can't hear high frequency sound.
 
I understand that most people lose the ability to hear bats in their mid-twenties. I was about forty when I lost that ability, for which I'm grateful. It's a sound I miss. I haven't heard a cat scarer for the last couple of years. But I definitely could hear them a couple of years ago, as I walked past some on a route I regularly took. That annoying sound kids were using as a ringtone because it was outside of the hearing range of most adults was a particular annoyance to me.

Sadly, my hearing has caught up with my age now. No more bat-pips for me.
 
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