Bats have terrible vision, you should know that already. And since they rely on their hearing more than any other mammal, they can navigate the night sky just by using their ears and the results of their echolocation, a natural sonar system.

What's more amazing to hear is that, in order to hear better, the returning ultrasonic pulses that are sent out, bats can change the structure of their ears in one extreme configuration to another in a tenth of a second.

Discovered by researchers at Virginia Tech who studied and captured the high speed movements of the bats' ears to udnerstand just why the ears were changing shape.

Head researcher Rolf Müller explains:

Via Physical Review Letters. Image by Jessicaljil on Flickr.