Megabat evolved early in the lineage of chiropterans. Although echolocation was later lost in family Pteropodidae, bats in the genus "Rousettus" are capable of primitive echolocation through clicking their tongues, and some species have been shown to create clicks similar to those of echolocating bats using their wings. Both echolocation and flight are energetically expensive processes. The nature of the flight and echolocation mechanism of bats allows for creation of echolocation pulses with minimal energy use. Energetic coupling of these two processes is thought to have allowed for both energetically expensive processes to evolve in bats. The loss of echolocation may
Animal echolocation below the photic zone. Further studies have found that echolocation below the photic zone could have been a predation adaptation to diel migrating cephalopods. Since its advent, there has been adaptive radiation especially in the family Delphinidae (dolphins) in which echolocation has become extremely derived. Two proteins have been found to play a major role in toothed whale echolocation. Prestin, a motor protein of the outer hair cells of the inner ear of the mammalian cochlea, has an association between the number of nonsynonymous substitutions and hearing sensitivity. It has undergone two clear episodes of accelerated protein evolution in cetaceans: