Humans too can use echolocation like bats, whales

According to new research, echolocation or the power to navigate using sounds alone is not limited to bats and dolphins alone, but those who do not have the power of sight are also capable of using this mechanism. 

In 2007, 14-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, California featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, on the CBS Evening News, and additionally in several print newspaper and magazine articles for being able to navigate around the neighbourhood and high school by rapid clicking of his tongue and using the echoes from these clicks to determine what is around him.
 
The technique even allows him to zip around his neighbourhood on roller blades. 

Underwood's seemingly unique ability to navigate by sound alone is referred to by the media as "echolocation," which is the name given by scientists to the ability of nocturnal creatures like bats to navigate by emitting sonar signals at high frequencies that the human ear cannot hear.  

Dolphins also use echolocation for navigating through the water making clicking sounds.
 
Underwood did the same with television cameras recording the spectacle at Sea World, to compare their methods to his own.

The concept of navigation with tongue clicks is hardly new and another Californian, Daniel Kish, has been doing it for years. He even teaches the technique to other blind people as supplementary measure to the use of a white cane or dog guide. 

Mel Goodale, director of the Centre for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario and Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience, was quoted in a Public Library of Science news release, saying, "It is clear that echolocation enables blind people to do things that are otherwise thought to be impossible without vision, and in this way it can provide blind and vision-impaired people with a high degree of independence in their daily lives."