Bats fly by grabbing the air in their their sensitive webbed. feeling little eddies of air, they adjust instantaneously deftly, teasing their way through air currents.
I'm certain birds have a similar sense of the air, but there is something more relatable and easier to imagine about being the bat, using great webbed hands to surf & climb air columns.
We haven't even gotten to the part about the radar yet!
If I could spend a day as a creature it'd be an ant, but 2nd choice is a bat.
@futurebird Well, I'm close to your wish. My first choice if I could spend a day as an animal (retaining my current brain) but adding the abilities of the animal, somehow, magically, without any practice, would be a domestic cat. The reasons should be obvious. Second choice has long been a bat. Not because I want to eat mosquitos but because I want to experience how it is to echolocate a mosquito while on the wing. That has to be amazing.
I love bats. When I lived in Guatemala, I'd frequently walk down to my private pier on the Rio Dulce river and stand at the end of the pier to serve as bait. Mosquitos love me and would swarm over me head. The bats took full advantage, swooping over my head so low they'd touch as they went by. Totally cool experience. While doing that I'd watch the "fishing bats". I don't know what species but they are very large (18 inches across?) and would skim over the surface of the water at high speed, occasionally snatching up an unwary fish.
I was told they use echolocation to examine the surface of the water and detect distortions caused by the passage of fish near the surface, thereby locating the fish. Yeesh. Speaking as an engineer, this certainly seems possible but an very impressive feat.
