Eclocation is a very unusual sense, that it is permanently active. It's actually quite straightforward to understand the bat's intent. You can get as close as you can to reading the creature's intentions and therefore its mind. But even then, there's still that question of, what does ecolocation feel like to a bat? And we don't know.
In the first episode of our new series Nature hits the books, science journalist Ed Yong joins us to talk about his new book An Immense World, which takes a journey through the weird and wonderful realm of animal senses.
In the show, we chat about how our human-centric view of the world has restricted researchers' understanding of animal senses, how to conceptualise what it might be like to be an electric-field sensitive fish, and what bees might make of us blushing...
An Immense World, Ed Yong, Random House (2022)
Music supplied by Airae/Epidemic Sound/Getty images.
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