Leaf-nosed bat rounded tips, range in body size from 4 cm to 13.5 cm and a wingspans of up to 90 cm or more. Like other bats, leaf-nosed bats are nocturnal foragers that use echolocation to locate food sources, though the food sources they are locating vary between species. Many bats in family Phyllostomidae appear to have limited reliance on echolocation, likely because frugivorous bats do not need to quickly identify flying insects like many other bats. Instead, species of leaf-nosed fruit bats appear to use scent to identify their preferred food sources. When they are not foraging, leaf-nosed bats roost in
Echolocation jamming times fainter than the sounds they emit. To avoid deafening themselves, whenever a bat makes an echolocation emission, a small muscle in the bat's middle ear (the stapedius muscle) clamps down on small bones called ossicles, which normally amplify sounds between the ear drum and the cochlea. This dampens the intensity of the sounds that the bat hears during this time, preserving hearing sensitivity to target echoes. Jamming can occur if an animal is still producing a sound when an echo returns, for example, from a nearby object. Bats avoid this type of jamming by producing short sounds of 3-50