Egyptian fruit bat their days roosting in trees or caves, often with large groups of other bats, sometimes numbering in the thousands. They emerge from the roost to forage for food in the late evening, and return just before dawn. They hang upside down, with their wings folded closely around their bodies. Egyptian fruit bats, along with other species in the genus "Rousettus", are the only megachiropterid bats to use echolocation, which they accomplish by emitting a series of sharp clicks with their tongues. The clicks are normally slow and constant, but these clicks speed up dramatically when the bats approach an object.
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.