One remarkable feature of this bat is that it seems to be able to judge the shape of objects from reflected echoes in a manner that is independent of object size. This ability may be widespread among echolocating bats, but in this species that faculty is well documented. Background noise, however, does appear to disrupt echolocation-based object recognition in the species. Pale spear-nosed bats show an unusually complex vocal repertoire, with up to 20 different calls, similar to that of many non-human primates. In addition to vocal communication, males also scent-mark their roosting sites using their throat glands, and both sexes are able to recognise specific males by their scent alone.