Animal echolocation in the external ear. There are two hypotheses about the evolution of echolocation in bats. The first suggests that laryngeal echolocation evolved twice in Chiroptera, once in the Yangochiroptera and once in the horseshoe bats (Rhinolophidae). The second proposes that laryngeal echolocation had a single origin in Chiroptera, was subsequently lost in the family Pteropodidae (all megabats), and later evolved as a system of tongue-clicking in the genus "Rousettus". Individual bat species echolocate within specific frequency ranges that suit their environment and prey types. This has sometimes been used by researchers to identify bats flying in an area simply by
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