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.
Animal echolocation basic level, echolocation is based on the neural anatomy of auditory brain circuitry. In essence, ascending brain pathways in the brain stem allow the brain to calculate the difference between the two ears to very small fractions of a second. Microbats use echolocation to navigate and forage, often in total darkness. They generally emerge from their roosts in caves, attics, or trees at dusk and hunt for insects into the night. Their use of echolocation allows them to occupy a niche where there are often many insects (that come out at night since there are fewer predators then), less competition