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
Echolocation jamming produce ultrasonic clicks in response to the echolocation calls bats use while attacking prey. For most species of tiger moth these clicks warn bats that the moths have toxic compounds that make them distasteful. However, the tiger moth "Bertholdia trigona" produces clicks at a very high rate (up to 4,500 per second) to jam bat echolocation. Jamming is the most effective defense against bats ever documented, with jamming causing a ten-fold decrease in bat capture success in the field. The possibility that moths jam bat echolocation arose with an experiment report published in 1965 by Dorothy Dunning and Kenneth Roeder.