How do bats find their food?

Bats are also nocturnal animals. Bats can see with their eyes (they are not blind!), but unlike owls they can’t see very well in the dark. Bats have a special adaptation called echolocation that helps them navigate at night. They emit ultrasonic sound waves with very high frequencies that are too high-pitched for humans to hear. These waves bounce (or echo) back when they hit an object. This helps the bat make a “sound map” to find bugs to eat and a safe path to fly. Echolocation gives them important information about their prey including the size and shape of an insect and which way it is going. Hunting with echolocation, a little brown bat will consume 600 mosquitoes, or mosquito-sized bugs, per hour, and eat more than half of their body weight in insects every night!