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> the rats are effectively as blind as the bat in the dark

Are they? Aren't rats nocturnal in the first place, meaning evolution should have given them some benefit in that environment? AFAIK, rats have pretty OK contrast/motion detection even in low light situations.

I guess if "in the dark" means "low light" or "total darkness". You're probably right for "total darkness" but if it's "low light", I think the rats would "see" better than the bats.

[nortlov]

You might be right. The paper mentioned the rats preferred hunting near the light barrier but also mentioned they probably climbed the fabric for an aerial advantage (they didn’t seem to prefer hunting near the light barrier once the fabric was removed).

[neom]

That's right, rats eyes are mostly rod based, they are very optimized for contrast shifts in extremely low light. They're also mostly colour blind.