In 1938, while an undergraduate at Harvard University, he began studying the navigational method of bats, which he identified as animal echolocation in 1944.

[1] Griffin was born on August 3, 1915, in Southampton, New York, and attended Harvard University, where he was awarded bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.

Experiments they conducted used methods developed by Hallowell Davis to monitor the brains of bats and their hearing responses as they navigated their way past wires suspended from a laboratory ceiling.

[2] During World War II, Griffin worked for National Defense Research Committee, where he supported the approval of the bat bomb.

In 1965 following on from research on bats conducted at the New York Zoological Society's field station in Trinidad and Tobago, he married Jocelyn Crane.