US, competing with native animals and causing destruction to fruit agriculture. As model animals The Egyptian fruit bat is used as a model animal in navigation research. They are especially suitable for this kind of research, because they use visual inputs in conjunction with echolocation to navigate. Additionally, their head is large enough to hold a wireless device that holds both electrodes that go into the brain and measure electrical activity of the cells, as well as a tracking device. This method was used to show that bats have place cells, which are cells that track their location, as well as head direction cells, which track the orientation of their head. Additionally they have vector cells, which contain a representation of the location relative to an important object. The bats are of particular interest, because these three types of cells have been shown to represent location and direction in 3D. Bats also have cells that represent the location of other bats, which researchers have called 'social place cells'. This finding was published in conjunction with a similar finding in rats. References Further reading External links Rousettus Bats of Africa Bats of Asia Bats of South Asia Bats of India Mammals of the Middle East Mammals of Western Asia Mammals of Pakistan Fauna of Egypt Mammals described in 1810 Taxa named by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire