Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bam Here. New words and meanings are entering our lexicon all the time. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, updates with hundreds or thousands of new and revised entries every quarter of every year, and one entry that was updated in a special unscheduled release
by Miriam Webster in March was social distancing. And although this term continues to be sadly relevant for us here at the beginning of two, it turns out that we're not the only ones keeping our distance. A study published in Behavioral Ecology in October showed the vampire bats distanced themselves from healthy bats when they're sick. Previous research has shown similar findings with different animals in a lab setting, but to get the same results in the wild was
quote really cool. That's according to Simon Rippager, the studies lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Ohio State University or o s U for the article This episode is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with Ripprager in he said there are similar reports from mice, for example, that act similar to vampire bats, but also social insects and lobsters and all kinds of animals. It's really exciting to see that experiments from the lab and in the
wild give the same results. For their study, researchers from os U and the University of Texas at Austin traveled to Belize in April, where they found a hollow tree with a vampire back colony. They blocked every exit from the tree but one and used a hand neet to cover this exit. The team then captured thirty one female vampire bats and injected sixteen of them with a substance that made them feel sick but didn't give the bats any disease. The substance kicked in after three hours and
lasted for around six to twelve hours. They injected the other roll group of bats was saline as a placebo. This didn't make the bats feel sick, but controlled for any effects that the act of being injected might have had. Then they glued miniature computer sensors to the backs of every bat before returning them to their home. Ripeter said, the sensors started collecting data on associations all these tiny backpacks. They talked to each other, and we know seven who
has been near whom. A technology like this will help researchers get rich data sets and a deeper understanding of the consequences such pathogen spreads in populations. For three days, researchers tracked the bats movements and social encounters in real time during these six hour treatment period, and the scientists found the sick bats spent twenty five fewer minutes interacting and socialized with four fewer bats than their healthy groupmates
did during the treatment period. Also, the healthy bats had a forty nine chance of associating with a healthy bat, while the sick bats only had a thirty five percent chance of associating with another sick bat. While the control bats normally associated for fifteen minutes an hour, the sick and healthy bats only associated for ten minutes each hour. A Rippeture said, we saw increased sleep and reduced movements
in the sick bats. Changes in behavior can really change how a pathogen spreads, and that is why health experts have advised us to socially distanced during the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Social distancing means keeping a safe space of at least six feet or about two meters or two arms length between you and people who are not in your household, and social distancing can reduce the spread of COVID nineteen when then infected person coughs, sneeze, or talks, because the odds of a droplet landing in your mouth or nose is reduced. If you wear a mask, it helps even more. Today's episode is based on the article socially distancing when ill is natural Just look at pire bats on house
toworks dot com, written by Francisco Guzman. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with houstuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Klain. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.