@BalooUriza not exclusively, sure, but they do have brain structures which process those visual-audio inputs very differently than humans do, especially when using echolocation proper (making a noise and responding to the echo of that input) and - presumably, bc we haven't interviewed bats reliably yet lmao - combining this into a gestalt understanding of the world around them.
there's a chapter on this in my old textbook if i manage to dig it up, it's actually a quite nice read, let me go look
@BalooUriza despite my best efforts, the book i think has been absorbed into my dad's book collection lol, which is a damn shame that i can't remember the thing's title enough to find it and link it online, as it's one of the very few textbooks i read that i considered a good read instead of yet another block of concrete to endure.
anyway, i think that echolocation is really different from what you're describing, which is audio processing of spacial awareness and depth of field. >
@BalooUriza it's a bit like saying radar is just listening, and therefore the ancient chinese defense system as explored by the mythbusters http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/chinese-sonar-invasion-alarms/ is radar, and is equal to radar being used in submarine warfare, so the differences are close enough to be the same, despite the supposedly ancient chinese system not using any radio waves in their RAdio Detection And Ranging. there's enough difference there, especially when you consider how radar is one imaging system >
@BalooUriza that is feeding into another and another set of imaging systems directly - like an airport that not only gathers data from radar, but also from satellite images of the weather, radio chatter with the pilots, and even specific variants of that radar system like IFF transponders.
basically it's a sufficiently different kettle of fish.
additionally, i think my point still stands here. the humans that know what it is to 'see' with echolocation are not going to seamlessly substitute >
@BalooUriza for what a bat processes, not just because a bat has specific neurological structures (that some rare sufficiently plastic human brains have been able to jury-rig something like) for obtaining/processing echolocation information, but also because a bat is going to be able to process that alongside visual input and make it into a whole. the few humans who have developed true echolocation are, to my knowledge, completely blind, and often have been since birth, which makes sense as >
@BalooUriza error, as it seems most people who are successful at human echolocation were not born blind but rather became blind later in life, usually a bit younger, with that neurological plasticity still there).
but at the end of the day - the echoes are what make *echo*location. the distinction about the ability to register a click off a bug is why the word echolocation *exists*.
the term you are looking for is "auditory spatial processing" for what you describe :)
@BalooUriza it explains how their brains were able to be that plastic to adapt - there was, in essence, space not being used that could be immediately repurposed, that was able to fall into generally the same spot of spacial awareness processing. there's some studies been done here highlighting the neurological differences that have resulted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Neural_substrates_of_echolocation_in_the_blind and showing that a lot of the time it basically is an adaptation of that visual processing area. (though i apologise for above>