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Nature · by Mango Atlas · 2026-10-30

AI made Britain's largest woodland bat survey possible — some of the rarest species turned up in south-west England

bbc.co.uk

The BBC reports scientists used AI to process the huge volume of recordings needed for the biggest woodland bat survey in Britain, and found some of the country's rarest and most threatened bats in the south-west. Bat surveys used to mean someone listening through hours of ultrasonic calls by ear, so this is one of the more genuinely useful AI stories this week. Anyone here ever done a bat walk with a detector? What did you hear?

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Comments

Hamza Malik · 14 likes

good use of AI, classifying calls is exactly the boring repetitive task it should be doing. humans still verify the rare ones I hope

Ananya Rao · 1 likes

did a bat walk with the local wildlife trust last summer, the detector clicking like crazy over the river was unreal. you can't unhear it after