What’s that chirping sound coming through the detector? Did you feel something whiz past?

Those are just some ways people react when they encounter microbats for the first time. Microbats are small, mostly nocturnal mammals that use ultrasonic sounds to navigate and hunt at night. They do this through echolocation, producing calls and listening to the echoes that bounce back from objects and prey.

Their nocturnal habits, small size and fast flight can make them uniquely difficult to find and study. Our latest research explored whether citizen science could help, while also asking what people themselves gain from taking part.

We entrusted bat detectors to a handful of curious volunteers from Western Australia. Bat detectors turn the ultrasonic calls of microbats into sound recordings humans can hear. These recordings also help us identify which bats are present, as different species produce calls that vary in their frequency, shape and timing.

Here’s what we found.

Bats are found everywhere except Antarctica and make up around 22% of mammal species in the world. Australia is home to more than 80 species, ranging from the thumb-sized little forest bat (Vespadelus vulturnus) to the much larger grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus).

Bats are sometimes described as “microbats” and “megabats”. These aren’t formal scientific groupings, but the terms are still commonly used to distinguish smaller bats from larger........

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