Why Aren't Bats Very Pretty To Look At?

Bats faces do tend to look, to us at least, to be fairly ugly. The sophisticated sound generation and reception system of an insect-eating bat has given many species their grotesque faces.

The sounds are produced through the nose or mouth, and are often amplified and focused by complex leaf-like structures on the nose (as in the horseshoe bat, leaf-nosed bats and spear-nosed bats). The echoes are received by ears that may have extra convolutions and flaps to pick up every trace of sound. In many species the ears are extremely large to increase their sensitivity. This gives bats a huge gaping mouth, big flappy ears, and not much in between.

The bat doesn't have a huge brain but it has the remarkable skill of being about to detect sound from its echos and build up an instant picture of its surroundings. For us, converting such time delays into distances would involve a lengthy mathematical calculation, but the bat's brain converts the delays instantly. The characteristics of an echo can also tell the bat something about the nature of an object: its shape, texture, softness or hardness.