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
Shrew orientation. In contrast to bats, shrews use echolocation only to investigate their habitats rather than additionally to pinpoint food. Except for large and thus strongly reflecting objects, such as a big stone or tree trunk, they probably are not able to disentangle echo scenes, but rather derive information on habitat type from the overall call reverberations. This might be comparable to human hearing whether one calls into a beech forest or into a reverberant wine cellar. The 385 shrew species are in 26 genera, which are grouped into three living subfamilies: Crocidurinae (white-toothed shrews), Myosoricinae (African shrews) and Soricinae (red-toothed