Does anyone know what type of bat this? Poor little bugger hit my office window a while back. Was unconscious, or stunned for a bit, but did manage to fly off. Alternate angle.
Edit: I’m in the Piedmont, NC area if that helps.
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Great question. Bats have a hard time with buildings in general because of flat, vertical surfaces. It's a physics issue.
When they make their click sound, what typically happens is the click hits a bunch of rough, natural surfaces, and a bunch of click echoes bounce back at different times and from different angles. This is what the bat brain computes to understand its surroundings.
When it approaches a flat, vertical surface at an angle, when it clicks, the echoes bounce off at an angle away from the bat. Since it doesn't hear anything in return from that area, it thinks there's nothing there. Bats can still see fairly well so they'll avoid the area if they can see it in time, but clean glass is clear, leading to bat bonk.
The same thing happens with flat horizonal surfaces, but bats will instinctually interpret that as water. An experiment from about ten years back found that bats interpret any flat, horizonal area they can't see or echolocate from as water. They'll even try to drink from it.
That's really interesting, thanks!
I didn't consider that, windows being flat, the echoes would bounce away from the bat unless it was flying directly perpendicular towards it.
Also, the water thing. Brains are weird, that's almost some Oliver Sacks mistaking one's wife for a hat kind of shit. Or how we can't really feel wetness, so we interpret certain combinations of pressure and temperature as such.