--- title: Myth check: are bats blind? — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Myth check: are bats blind?», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: People say «as blind as a bat», but every bat can see, and big fruit bats have large eyes that work well in dim light. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Myth check: are bats blind? # Myth check: are bats blind? Lesson 153 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/153-are-bats-blind/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/0/) — People say «as blind as a bat», but every bat can see, and big fruit bats have large eyes that work well in dim light. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/1/) — Many small insect-eating bats have a second trick: they shout high-pitched calls and listen to the echoes, like a torch made of sound, which is called echolocation. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/2/) — On a summer evening over a pond you can watch bats swoop and twist after midges; each turn is a bat hearing an echo and snatching an insect it cannot easily see in the dark. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/3/) — Films show bats tangling in hair and vampires biting people, and Batman made the bat a dark, scary sign; real bats are shy, useful animals that eat pests, spread seeds and pollinate flowers. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/4/) — Bats are not blind; all bats can see, and many see quite well. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/5/) — Many small bats echolocate: they send out high calls and judge where an insect is, and even its size and shape, from the echoes; an echo from something close comes back sooner than one from far away. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/6/) — Big fruit bats called flying foxes have large eyes for dim light, and most of them do not echolocate at all. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/7/) — Bats do not get tangled in people's hair; they are very good at avoiding obstacles and may fly close only to catch insects around people. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/8/) — Real vampire bats are small, live in Central and South America, and mostly feed on the blood of cattle, horses and birds, rarely people. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/9/) — Bats hang upside down by their feet, and tendons lock their claws shut under their own weight, so hanging costs almost no effort. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/10/) — Bats take off by letting go and dropping into flight, because their legs are too small and light to jump up from the ground like a bird. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/11/) — A bat's wing is its hand: long finger bones hold out thin stretchy skin, and the thumb is a little free hook. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/12/) — Bats are the only mammals that can truly fly, and about one in five of all mammal kinds is a bat. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/13/) — A tiny pipistrelle, lighter than a coin, can eat around 3,000 small insects in one night. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/14/) — Some bats feed on fruit and nectar and, like bees, carry pollen between flowers and spread seeds; the wild ancestors of bananas and the agave are pollinated by bats. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/15/) — Many moths can hear bat calls and dive or drop to escape, and some tiger moths click back at bats, which may confuse the bat's echolocation or warn that the moth tastes bad. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/16/) — In cold countries many bats hibernate, and waking them uses up their stored fat, so bat caves are closed to visitors in winter. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/153-are-bats-blind/17/) — In China bats have long been a sign of good luck, because the word for bat sounds like the word for good fortune. - ← previous: [Myth check: do goldfish have a three-second memory?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/152-goldfish-memory/) - next →: [More animal myths: red rags, camel humps, porcupine arrows, toads and falling cats](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/154-more-animal-myths-from-cartoons/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)