Study
The sensory basis of obstacle avoidance by flying bats
Griffin, Donald R.; Galambos, Robert
Journal of Experimental Zoology, 1941
Bats were flown through a grid of suspended wires with their ears plugged, their mouths covered, their eyes covered, or intact, and collision rates were compared. A newly available ultrasonic detector allowed the emissions themselves to be observed.
- Studied in
- Myotis lucifugus, Eptesicus fuscus
- Sample size
- bats flown through wire arrays under sensory deprivation
Blinded bats avoided the wires as well as sighted ones. Bats whose ears were plugged or whose mouths were closed collided repeatedly. Ultrasonic pulses were detected during flight and increased in rate as obstacles approached.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Bats orient by emitting high-frequency sounds and listening for the returning echoes — a sense the authors named echolocation.
How NatureHQ reads it
This is the founding experiment of a whole field, and its design is still worth studying: the hypothesis is tested by removing one channel at a time, so the result cannot be attributed to general impairment. The obstacle-avoidance question had been open since Spallanzani’s blinded bats in 1794; what changed was the instrument. Nobody could confirm the hypothesis until a microphone existed that could hear above 20 kHz.
- Two North American vespertilionid species; echolocation varies enormously across bats, and Old World fruit bats mostly do not do it at all.
- Wire-avoidance in a room is a much simpler task than catching an insect in flight.
- Sensory deprivation methods of the period were crude by modern standards.
Flying bats through a room strung with wires
Spallanzani showed in 1794 that blinded bats navigate and deafened ones cannot. For 150 years nobody could say how. What is the missing sense?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Wiley journalsPublished in a Wiley journal.
doi.org/10.1002/jez.1400860310
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.