Echolocation was thought to be the domain of three creatures: bats, dolphins and Marvel’s Daredevil. Long suspected and now proven, we can add humans to the short list.

Research appears in the journal Acta Acustica that explains the process, via Discovery:

By recording the sounds and analyzing the shape of their sound waves, the team determined that the front click, or “palatal click,” was the most suited for echolocation. It is a simple sound, so the brain can interpret the echo easily, Martinez noted, but it also contains many frequencies. “The more frequencies involved in the echo, the more information about the object,” he said.

Kish agrees that many of the best echolocators use palatal clicks, but he noted that there is a role for both types. The rear-of-the-mouth click can be used to make very loud “power clicks,” he said, which are helpful for locating a building from a distance, even if the resolution of the information created by the sound is not as sharp as with the clearer palatal click.

Natural clicks are optimal for echolocation, Martinez added. According to research in progress, “if you don’t use natural clicks, your echolocation performance will be orders of magnitude worse.”

No, not Batman’s bat cave, an actual bat cave. You know, where bats live.

Scientists exploring bat caves have made a discovery that has the potential to unlock longevity in humans. It has been a mystery for many years as to why bats live longer than other mammals of the same size. That mystery may have been solved and the solution may be finding its way to humans in the future.

From the FASEB Journal:

“Ultimately we are trying to discover what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we might be able to develop therapies that allow people to age more slowly,” said Asish Chaudhuri, Professor of Biochemistry, VA Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas and the senior researcher involved in the work.

Asish and colleagues made their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining proper structure under extreme stress.

“Maybe Juan Ponce De León wasn’t too far off the mark when he searched Florida for the Fountain of Youth,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “As it turns out, one of these bat species lives out its long life in Florida. Since bats are rodents with wings, this chemical clue as to why bats beat out mice in the aging game should point scientists to the source of this elusive fountain.”