The short version
- Microbats hunt with calls too high for human ears, and a bat detector converts them into sounds people can hear and record.
- Volunteers in Wanneroo, Perth, recorded five species on 23 walks in 2025, including the first local record of Holt’s long-eared bat.
- Participants said they knew more about bats and felt more connected to nature afterwards, but the article gives no figures.
Microbats find their way and their food by echolocation: they send out ultrasonic calls and listen for the echoes, at pitches people cannot hear. A bat detector converts those calls into audible recordings, and because each species’ calls differ in frequency, shape and timing, the recordings can identify who flew past. In 2025, researchers in the City of Wanneroo, on the northern edge of Perth, trained local residents to use detectors plugged into their smartphones and sent them in small groups along set routes through bushland. Over 23 surveys the volunteers recorded five species. Gould’s wattled bat, which copes well with cities, was the most common. Holt’s long-eared bat was recorded in Wanneroo for the first time, and no chocolate wattled bats turned up at the urban sites.
The study, published in Conservation Science and Practice, also asked participants about bats three times: before training, after training and after their own surveys. The authors report more knowledge, warmer views of bats and a stronger connection to nature, though the article gives no numbers. Their separate review of 51 bat citizen-science studies worldwide found that detector surveys were the most common method, and that few studies asked what volunteers got out of it. Bats make up about 22% of the world’s mammal species, and Australia has more than 80.
For a related reminder of how much bats hear, see our brief on mother bats’ heart rates rising at their pups’ calls.
