Onychonycteris known species, hence "Onychonycteris" meaning "clawed bat". The specific epithet is a tribute to the fossil prospector and preparator who discovered it, Bonnie Finney. "Onychonycteris finneyi" was the strongest evidence so far in the debate on whether bats developed echolocation before or after they evolved the ability to fly. "O. finneyi" had well-developed wings, and could clearly fly, but lacked the enlarged cochlea of all extant echolocating bats, closer resembling the old world fruit bats which do not echolocate. This indicates that early bats could fly before they could echolocate. However, an independent evaluation of the "Onychonycteris" reference fossil in
Bat species identification (or "Pips") give good examples of what can be discovered with a bat detector and make a good start to learning how to identify bats. Bat detectors pick up various signals in the ultrasound range, not all of which are made by bats. To distinguish bat and bat species it is important to recognise non-bat species. Captured bats can be exactly identified in the hand but in many countries a licence is required before bats can be captured. There are four basic types of bat echolocation call. The term "frequency modulation" (FM) refer to the "chirp" type of bat call.