14 Animals With Echolocation and How Each One Uses Sound to Navigate the Dark
October 25, 2026
Most animals rely on eyes to find food and avoid danger. A smaller, stranger group of creatures does something far more remarkable: they build a picture of their surroundings entirely out of sound.
Echolocation is the process of emitting a call and reading the returning echo to judge distance, shape, and movement. Wikipedia’s entry on animal echolocation describes it as “a biological active sonar used by several animal groups, both in the air and underwater.” According to National Geographic, over a thousand species echolocate, including most bats, all toothed whales, and small mammals. This piece walks through the 14 animals with echolocation that scientists study most closely, from ocean giants to a lemur that never actually echolocates at all.
1. Bats (microbats)
Microbats are the animals most people picture first when they hear the word echolocation. The suborder includes species such as the little brown bat, Myotis lucifugus, which hunts flying insects in total darkness by voice alone. According to Baleines en direct, bats produce sounds of up to 140 dB with their larynx, emitted from the mouth as ultrasound that can reach 150,000 Hz, far beyond human hearing.
These calls are more than loud; they are precise. The short wavelengths of high-frequency calls reflect well off small targets like insects, letting bats detect prey up to five meters away and dodge obstacles as fine as a human hair. Because bats roost in dense colonies and share caves with other species, they are also one of the more commonly cited animals with rabies risk, a fact that has nothing to do with echolocation but often comes up in the same conversation. Their sonar also depends on some of the sharpest hearing in the animal kingdom, which is why bats rank among the animals with the best hearing ever measured.
2. Toothed whales (Odontoceti)
Toothed whales, the group known scientifically as Odontoceti, include dolphins, porpoises, and the largest of all echolocators, the sperm whale. Unlike bats, these animals hunt in an environment where sound travels roughly four times faster than in air, giving their sonar an edge over vision in murky or deep water. Discover Wildlife explains that clicks pass through nasal air near the blowhole into a fatty forehead structure called the melon, which focuses the sound into a beam, and the echo returns through the lower jaw to the ears.
This shared anatomy is why odontocetes, as a group, carry more conical teeth than almost any other mammal lineage, a trait explored further in this list of animals with the most teeth. The next six sections look at specific members of this group, each with a distinct way of putting the same basic sonar system to use.
3. Dolphins
Dolphins are the most studied of all marine echolocators, and the bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, is the species behind most of what scientists know about cetacean sonar. According to Smore Science, bottlenose dolphins are adept enough at echolocation to distinguish an object the size of a ping-pong ball from a football field away.
That resolution comes from more than raw hearing. Dolphins can aim their sound beam at different parts of a fish to tell species apart, and pods often coordinate hunts using the same clicks for both sonar and communication. Their ability to recall individual acoustic signatures and social bonds for years is part of why dolphins consistently appear on lists of animals with good memory.
4. Sperm whales
The sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, produces the loudest biological sound on the planet. Per Smore Science, their clicks can reach up to 236 decibels in air, roughly 44 times louder than a thunderclap, generated through phonic lips in the nose rather than a larynx.
These clicks travel far enough underwater that sperm whales can hear one another across entire ocean basins, letting scattered individuals stay loosely in contact while hunting squid a mile or more below the surface. That kind of longevity in the deep sea fits a species that also happens to be one of the animals with the longest lifespan among marine mammals, often living well past 60 years.
5. Beluga whales
The beluga, Delphinapterus leucas, is one of only two members of the family Monodontidae, and researchers frequently study it alongside its closest living relative for exactly that reason. As a study in Scientific Reports notes, belugas and narwhals are closely related toothed whales that use echolocation to identify objects and locate prey, unlike the baleen bowhead whale, which never evolved this sense.
Belugas migrate seasonally between pack ice and warmer estuaries, using their sonar to track schooling fish such as Arctic cod through waters that shift from clear to nearly opaque with silt. Their flexible melon, which they can visibly reshape, lets them switch between a broad search beam and a narrow, focused pulse depending on how cluttered the water is.
6. Orcas
Orcas, or Orcinus orca, are the largest members of the dolphin family and among the very few cetaceans whose clicks fall partly within the range of human hearing. Researchers have specifically recorded free-ranging killer whales producing echolocation clicks while feeding on herring, a behavior detailed in acoustic studies cataloged in the Polar Biology literature.
What sets orcas apart is behavioral flexibility layered on top of biological sonar. Populations that hunt fish click almost constantly while foraging, while pods that specialize in hunting marine mammals click far more sparingly, likely to avoid tipping off prey that can also hear underwater. That combination of raw power and restraint helps explain why orcas rank among the animals with the strongest bite force in the ocean, and why they are one of the more frequently searched animals that start with O.
7. Narwhals
The narwhal, Monodon monoceros, is famous for its spiral tusk, but its sonar is arguably the more useful adaptation for survival in the Arctic. A 2021 study in Scientific Reports found that narwhals forage for Greenland halibut and Gonatus squid at depths often exceeding 1,000 meters during winter months, an environment with no usable light whatsoever.
At that depth, eyesight is essentially useless, so narwhals depend on clicks and returning echoes to hunt, avoid predators, and find breathing holes in shifting sea ice. Compared with land mammals that top lists of animals with the best eyesight, narwhals are a reminder that vision is not always the dominant sense, even among large, intelligent animals.
8. Harbor porpoises
Harbor porpoises, Phocoena phocoena, produce one of the most distinctive click signatures of any toothed whale: an extremely high, narrow-band frequency that differs sharply from the broadband clicks used by most dolphins. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology tracked porpoises through a search phase and an approach phase, noting that click intervals stay fairly constant early in the hunt, then drop sharply within two to four meters of prey and end in a rapid buzz just before capture.
This buzz phase mirrors the terminal feeding buzz seen in insect-hunting bats, a striking example of two unrelated lineages converging on the same acoustic strategy. Harbor porpoises are also relatively short-lived for cetaceans, rarely surviving past their early twenties, which puts them closer to the animals that start with H and other small, fast-metabolism marine mammals than to long-lived whales. Their close relative, the smaller and less social animals that start with P guide, covers related porpoise species that share this narrow-band clicking trait.
9. Oilbirds
The oilbird, Steatornis caripensis, is one of only two bird lineages known to echolocate, and it does so with an organ no mammal possesses: the syrinx, a bird’s vocal structure. According to National Geographic, ornithologist Kate Allen has explained that nocturnal oilbirds produce short clicks with their syrinx to navigate the dark caves where they roost.
Because oilbirds also fly out at night to feed on fruit far from their roosts, they combine two systems: sonar for the pitch-black cave interior and unusually large, light-sensitive eyes for dim forest light outside. That dual toolkit places them among the more surprising animals with big eyes that still depend on sound as their primary sense indoors.
Key Insight: Echolocation is not one adaptation but several. Scientists tracing its evolutionary history have found that biological sonar arose independently across bats, toothed whales, shrews, tenrecs, and soft-furred tree mice, making it one of the clearest examples of convergent evolution in the animal kingdom.
10. Swiftlets
Swiftlets are the second bird group known to echolocate, and several species nest by the million inside pitch-dark limestone caves across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. A-Z Animals notes that swiftlets make extremely quick clicks to communicate and navigate, living in flocks of up to one million members inside cave systems throughout Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
Unlike bat calls, swiftlet clicks are audible to the human ear, a byproduct of using the syrinx rather than a specialized ultrasonic organ. Species such as the pygmy swiftlet rely on this clicking almost entirely once inside a cave, since their eyes offer little help in total darkness.
11. Shrews
Shrews use a far cruder version of echolocation than bats or whales, but it works well enough for animals with famously poor eyesight. Several species, including members of the genus Sorex, produce sharp, high-pitched twitters that bounce off nearby leaves, soil, and rocks. Reporting on shrew behavior found that shrews called more often when their surroundings were altered, suggesting the sounds help them adjust to changes along their path.
Shrews also happen to be some of the most fiercely solitary and territorial animals in the mammal world, defending small foraging ranges and rarely tolerating others of their own species nearby. That antisocial, lone-animal lifestyle pairs naturally with a sense built for private, close-range navigation rather than group coordination. Shrews also burn through life fast, which is part of why they rank among the animals with the shortest lifespan of any mammal, often living less than two years.
Common Mistake: Not every shrew species echolocates, and the ones that do produce a much simpler signal than bats. It is closer to acoustic sensing than the finely tuned sonar used by toothed whales.
12. Tenrecs (lowland streaked tenrec)
The lowland streaked tenrec, Hemicentetes semispinosus, is a spiny, insect-eating mammal from Madagascar and one of the odder entries on any list of animals with echolocation. Discover Wildlife calls it “one of the more unusual animals that has evolved echolocation”, a nod to how far removed tenrecs are from bats or whales on the mammalian family tree.
Like shrews, tenrecs click their tongues rather than using a larynx-based call, a simple system suited to short-range foraging in leaf litter. Streaked tenrecs are also largely solitary animal species that live alone outside of breeding season, foraging at night through dense undergrowth where sound, not sight, does most of the work.
13. Chinese pygmy dormouse
The Chinese pygmy dormouse, a member of the genus Typhlomys, belongs to a small group of rodents sometimes called soft-furred tree mice, one of the more recently confirmed lineages of echolocating mammals. A 2023 evolutionary study noted that echolocation has evolved across multiple vertebrate lineages, including birds, bats, whales, shrews, tenrecs, and soft-furred tree mice, placing this tiny rodent in genuinely rare company.
Its close relative, the Vietnamese pygmy dormouse, is functionally blind and relies on tongue clicks almost entirely to move through its environment, and the Chinese species is believed to use a similar strategy. Both are nocturnal, tree-dwelling, and largely solitary, foraging alone through dense vegetation where echolocation substitutes for the vision most rodents depend on.
14. Aye-aye (percussive tapping, not true echolocation)
The aye-aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis, is often mentioned alongside echolocating animals, though its trick is closer to percussive foraging than true biological sonar. This nocturnal lemur taps tree bark rapidly with an unusually thin, elongated finger, then listens for subtle changes in the sound to locate hollow chambers where grubs are hiding.
That specialized digit is one reason the aye-aye shows up on lists of animals with claws, since the same finger doubles as a tool for extracting larvae once a cavity is found. Aye-ayes are solitary, territorial, and almost entirely nocturnal, which fits the broader pattern among echolocating and echolocation-adjacent species: creatures that navigate by sound tend to be lone animals operating in darkness where sight offers little advantage.
Important Note: The aye-aye’s tapping behavior, technically called tap-scanning, does not involve emitting sound and reading an echo the way bats or whales do. It is included here because it is frequently grouped with echolocation in casual discussion, even though the underlying mechanism is different.
Across all 14 groups, the same pattern repeats: an animal facing darkness, murky water, or poor eyesight trades vision for a self-generated map built out of sound. Bats and toothed whales represent the most refined versions of this ability, while shrews, tenrecs, and the Chinese pygmy dormouse show that even a crude clicking system can be enough to survive in a lightless world. The oilbird and swiftlet prove the same principle applies outside the mammal family entirely, and the aye-aye’s percussive tapping shows how close, but distinct, a related strategy can be. Taken together, these species make a strong case that sound, not sight, is often the more reliable sense when the environment goes dark.