Here's a possible explanation for why rock star Ozzy Osbourne infamously bit the head off a bat: he couldn't stand the competition. Bat calls, it turns out, can reach up to a deafening 140 dB – that's 20 dB louder than a rock concert and 15 dB above the human pain threshold. Annemarie Surlykke at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and Elisabeth Kalko of the University of Ulm, Germany, reasoned that bats with the highest frequency calls would compensate for the small detection distance. (source: newscientist.com)
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