Lucky Horseshoe Bat: An Unextinction Event!

been seen for forty years. They exist only in Rwanda and were critically endangered, so their disappearing act was of great concern. But after a five year period of survey efforts, in twenty nineteen, Bat Conservation International and the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association spotted a bat with an incredibly strange looking face, one suspiciously like the disappeared Hills's Horseshoe bat, and after comparing it to museum samples, it was confirmed the bat

that was feared gone forever is still out there. So joining me today to discuss this discovery, to talk about who is this little bat and why it's so important, and to answer some of your questions about bats. Is Dr Winifred Frick, chief scientist of Bat Conservation International. Welcome, Dr Frick, thank you so much for joining me. Oh my pleasure. I'm delighted to be here. So I am

so excited. This is such wonderful news. We seem to hear all the time about animals who are endangered or going extinct, and it's so lovely to hear about an animal that has been rediscovered. Absolutely, and it was so incredible to be part of that rediscovery for for exactly that reason, to know that the species is still on the planet, living out its best life in the forests of Rwanda. It's best weird faced life. So yeah, let's get to know the subject of the discovery. The hills

is horseshoe bats. So the hills is horseshoe bat. Like many horseshoe bats, is really striking looking. Its face looks kind of like an mc escher painting or like an orchid. Why why does it look like it has a furry orchid face? And can you give a little bit of a physical description of this bat? Sure, the horseshoe bats

have this unusual flap of skin on their faces. It's really evolution of their their nose and so they and they have different sort of complicated sort of folds and wrinkles, and so one of the ways that you identify different horseshoe bats is by looking at the sort of the shape and size of some of these different sort of folds and flaps. So all horseshoe bats have a unique face. And Hill's horseshoe bat, some of those facial features are

really exaggerated, and so they're just I described it as comical. Um, they really do, um look pretty funny, but it's it's all part of their ability to use echolocation for um, looking for insects out of the night sky. That's really interesting. So how do those folds help enhance their echolocation? Well, you know, they're using sound at night, so they're emitting high frequency sounds and and so they are and then

listening for the echoes back. And horseshoe bats are what we call a constant frequency bats, so they're putting out a single pulse at a at a constant frequency and then listening for the echoes and actually use Doppler shift to be able to do that. And so yeah, I can't really say exactly how all of the different integral features of their faces help them do that, because I personally have a hard time imagining what the sensory world of a bat would really be like using sound to

perceive its environment. But I imagine that they have a very rich ability to uh to perceive their environment that is quite different than ours. And you know, there's this whole myth about that's being blind and um, far from it, that's actually can see fairly fairly well as well. But then they have this whole other amazing sensory adaptation using sound. So it's you know, no no surprise that their their faces and their features would look different and be highly

specialized for the way that they're experiencing their environment. That's so interesting to me that they, yeah, that they perceive the world not just visually but through sound, and somehow inside their brain they are creating a map of their surroundings with the sound. It's it's so hard to think

about what it would be like. They have these you know, large ears that are like really sensitive to be able to you know, hear the echoes back, and if you think about the fact that they're emitting really loud pulses of sounds so that they could bounce back and then determine where um the objects are that the sounds bouncing back from. They have really sensitive hearing, and yet they're emitting really loud sounds too, so they also have some

really neat adaptations. This is bats echolocating bats in general, not just tells horseshoe bat, of having really rapid acting muscles in their earbones that can dislocate at the moment that they emit sound and then instantly come back um in place so that they can listen for that. So there's just so much that's special about the anatomy and

morphology of these animals that is so cool. So they can mute their ears so they don't have to listen to their own sound as they're emitting it, but then turn it back on when they need to perceive that sounds. I wish I had that skill because as as a podcasters, someone who has to edit my audio and listen to my own voice, it's it's torture. So I yeah, yeah, I've read it conscribed as the fastest acting mammalian muscle, So remember where I read that. But that's one of

my one of my favorite go to guiz facts. About bats. That's incredible. I didn't know that and that is really fascinating. Speaking of that bat sound, your team also captured the first recording of the Hills Horseshoe bat and so I'm gonna play that right now. So it sounds to me it sounds like someone playing like a penny whistle. It's a it's a very it's a very sweet sound, very

cute sound. Well, and I should clarify too, So that's their echolocation polls, but slowed way down interesting for hear it. So when the bat is out foraging in the forest, um, it's it's echocating around thirty killer hurt, so well above the normal range of human hearing um, so we wouldn't be able to hear it at all. It'd be totally

silent to us. And then interestingly, when my colleague Dr John Flanders first slowed it down to play the clip, he sent it to me all excited and I couldn't hear it, and I said, there's a problem with the file, And it turns out that he just hadn't slowed it down enough for my ears right. Actually, hear much above ten killer hurts, where some people can hear up as high as fifteen and or even twenty, and so he just slowed down even further so that that I'd be

able to hear it. Yeah, there are certain frequencies that only younger ears can hear. So if you're if you're like a kid and you want to, uh pull a prank on your parents, sometimes you can play a sound that kids can hear and adults can't hear. I've probably been to too many concerts to be able to here that that bat sound as well. So but yeah, so that is that's really interesting. So what do we really know about the Hills horseshoe bats behavior because we haven't

seen them in forty years? Are they pretty reclusive and hard to know much about or have we learned anything about them? Yeah, well there's still lots to learn what we know. So there's only been two individuals prior to our expedition in January. There's only ever been two individuals described, one in nineteen sixty four and another one and um. Both of those individuals were observed in the Uinka region of Nyangue National Park, which is in southwestern Rwanda and

only eight kilometers apart. And and that's exactly the same spot where we found actually captured two individuals on that trip. So from best we can tell, this is a very rare um ecs with a very small geographic range that's in the very heart of Niangua National Park, basically essentially in one watershed, and so whether they had a larger range historically, you know, unfortunately Rwanda has experienced a high rate of deforestation, especially in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties.

Nianguai National Park now is protected by Rwanda and is really one of the sort of crown jewels of conservation and in protection in Rwanda, which takes its conservation and its wildlife species protections very seriously. But you know, it seems like this, I mean, this is a Rwanda is called the Land of a Thousand Hills and it's in

this Albertine Rift area of central Africa. So the forest there is really old, meaning that this part of the planet has had this kind of forest for a very long time, like it didn't experience a change in habitat at during glacial periods and things. And so what you find in those kinds of situations is really high rates of biodiversity and high rates of endemism because the habitat has been there a long time. So what we think is that this species probably has naturally had a small range.

Maybe it was large at one point, but it's lost part of that range due to deforestation. And so there's a small population hanging on in the heart of this really beautiful and protected afromontane rainforest in Rwanda. And so when you say that animals have a high rate of endemism in these forests, that means they are only found in these really old forests. Why why is it that, like when you have a really old region that you tend to find animals who are exclusive to that region

and found nowhere else. Yeah, well so we so it's kind of a combination. In that area, you have high biodiversity beca the Alberteen Rift because the forest is really old, but it's also a very very mountainous landscape, and so you've got lots of features that could end up sort of allowing species to sort of separate and Specie eight and so you end up with and then that's surrounded

by habitats that maybe are different. So throughout Africa and other areas, you know, you we get what we call like sky islands, where you get these mountain habitats that are surrounded by a sea of lowland, and that is also lends itself to endemism, meaning that species occur there

and nowhere else. So on another project, we're working on the critically endangered LaMotte's round leaf fat which is in the Nimba Mountains in West Africa, and it only occurs in that mountain range because that mountain range is isolated and surrounded by a sea of lowland. That's so incredible.

I mean, it's it's both really interesting and a little bit frightening to me, this idea that we have species that are very specialized found in a very tiny range, and we could lose them if we lose these habitats, like if this, if this tiny area where this hills his horseshoe bat is ever threatened, we would lose not just this bat, but many other species that are probably

very highly specialized to this one little region. That's right, and that's why it's so incredible the commitment that we see from Rwanda and the Rwanda Development Board to protect the remaining forests that's there. I mean, Younga National Park is the largest intact tract of Afromontine rainforest left in central Africa. It's over a thousand kilometers is protected. When you drive from Keigali, which is the capital city of Rwanda, down to the Young Boy which is in the southwestern

corner of the country. It's a small country, but it takes a while to get there, and it's really mountainous, and so the whole drive, um, it's incredible to see the mountainous landscape, and most of that is you know, covered in in agriculture and in different kinds of crops,

even up these steep hills sites, it's really incredible. And it is until you get to the border of Young Way that you get to this point where you can look out over the hills and see the landscape draped in this Aframontine forest, and it's almost like that you can just feel the kind of the mountain sort of breathe.

And so it's an incredibly valuable important area to protect and and and and yet you know, we don't know necessarily if other species in some of the other areas we might have already lost them, for instance, you know, and I want to you know, I mean, this is a problem the world over that so much of our landscape has been converted to agriculture to grow crops and feed people, and of course that's super important, but we obviously need to find ways to also be able to

do that and support biodiversity right right, And in the problem with monocultures, even if they are efficient in terms of feeding people, is that when you only have one kind of plant, one kind of crop, that's really not conduced of to supporting wildlife that may be specialized in feeding on a different kind of vegetation or need some variety in their diet. Yeah. And then in the in the um Younger National Park has you know, many other different species as well. I think it's got the record

for the most primate species in Rwanda. Of course, Rwanda is famous for their amazing conservation of the guerrillas and those are up in Volcanoes National Parks. And the Young Bay doesn't have grillas, but it does have chimpanzees. And I think there's thirteen different species of primates in the park too, So lots of um different animals called Youngwa home and and and this bat has a small population there.

And you know, we we initially thought that there was a good chance that was roosting in caves because lots of different rhino Loofu species living caves um and so we were working with the Young Way Park rangers to identify the different caves that might be in the park, and they did and some incredible work before where we got there too, on all of their patrols documenting the location of different caves and whether they've seen any sign

of bats there. And so a big part of our effort while we were there was actually serving some of those caves um and we we found evidence of other species and there other bats, but not hill sworshoe bat, and as best we can tell now, um, it seems like it's probably a tree roosting bats. So that speaks even more to the importance of the forest. Well even even bats that recent caves need for us because they

need places to forage. I mean it is It is interesting because I think people do have this concept that all bats live in caves are cave cave dollars, and indeed there are a lot of species of bats that do live in caves, but there are a lot of arboreal bats, uh, And just like an incredible diversity of bats that all have sort of their own ecological niche that they inhabit that's right, about forty of bat species roosting caves, but trees are probably the most important resource

for bats around the world. And we should remember too. You know, there's um over four different species of bats uh on planet Earth Earth, and so when we talk about bats sometimes people forget that there's just so much diversity and there's lots of different ways of making a bat living out there. Yeah, it's one of the most diverse groups of of mammals that I know, I know of.

It's it's just in terms of their morphology and how many different kinds of like there are insectivores, their frugivores nick dearivor is just it seems like every sort of little area where they could specialize in they will do that. Yeah. I mean flight does amazing things for giving you the chance to being able to get around the planet and also specialized into different niches. Um. Yeah, the only they're

the second most of verse group of mammals. So rodents have the most species and then bats are are in second place in terms of number of species on the planet. That's really amazing. So, I mean you don't have to convince me or probably my listeners because I love bats. My listeners love bats. This is basically, even though we talk about all sorts of animals, this is a bat fan club here. But why is it so important to keep track of these rare species of bats and maintain

their populations? Because because there are so many different species of bats, what do we lose when a particular species is endangered or goes extinct. The loss of a species is in some ways just existential in terms of UM what it means. I mean, we know that we share the planet with other other organisms, and that UM, biodiversity writ large is incredibly important. UM. I think that over and over again we've been able to quantify and document

the value of biodiversity to humans. UM. I like to talk about the values that beyond what what species do for us. Right. Bats in general provide incredible ecosystem services to humans into the planet. Right, So they're incredibly important consumers of agricultural pests. In terms of their insectivorous bats. UM,

that's that pollinate. Uh. Nectivious bats are really important pollinators for a variety of different plants, some of which have commercial value to human economies, but in also are really important for maintaining rainforests. Seat bats that eat fruit and disperse seeds have been shown to have really important value to rainforest regeneration. They tend to like trees that are good pioneer species like figs, and so they fly along

distances so they can drop seeds places and um. So there's there's a strong body of work that shows um

and puts actual dollar amounts. It's been estimated in the United States that insectivious that's provide in the billions of dollars to the U S agricultural industry, and researchers in Thailand of estimated the value of common fretail bat that lives there in terms of the amount of predation that does on rice pest and and calculated the number of the increased yield due to that predation of that rice crop pest and UM. I think even put it in terms of how many bags of rice per year um

that that provides. Oftentimes, when we talk about ecosystem services though that that's being provided um by that's that are highly abundant and those are super important to text. And so your question was about the value of these rare bats. So what is the value of this rare species that's living in the forest of in one little area of one forest in Rwanda. Well, i'd say that it's a part of that forest ecosystem. It has, in my view,

a right to live there. It's certainly, as we've seen from the interest in this rediscovery, it certainly has value in terms of its ability to capture our attention and fascination and and and make us take a moment and think about who we are and what our role is in that sense of awe and that sense of fascination and that sense of respect. I think it's hard to quantify, but is real. I absolutely agree, and I I think

it is. It is an important thing because I do talk often about like the importance of animals to the world into humans in terms of the sort of this tapestry of interactions that helps support the planet which we live on, so we need. But I think there is something that is more philosophical about preserving species and making

sure they're still out there. Bear survival is great in terms of, you know, the human experience, but we also enjoy things like art, and even if it doesn't necessarily like we can't quantify what exactly art does for us, but I think It's a similar thing with with species, Like here's something that has evolved over millions of years, and here it is still alive, Like this live it's it's a living, it's all. It's kind of almost goes

beyond art. I don't know how else to describe it, but it's this this living, intricate work of natural beauty and art, and it's I think there's something like when you hear about one of these species, like you said, being rediscovered, it inspires so much hope because we hear so much about the planet dying in all of these issues, which are very important to talk about, but I think it is just as important to talk about the animals that can be saved and who are still out there,

and that you know there is there is hope for animals and for humans, because sometimes with all of the doomsday news, I think people sometimes get this sense like there's no point in trying anymore, everything is doomed. But that's really not true. We have so much, so much ability to preserve species and to learn find discover things that we thought maybe there was no hope for, like the fact I mean again, like that we didn't weren't able to see these guys for forty years and your

team found them. It's it is really inspiring. I feel that way. I mean, it's hard to describe the feeling of of being there and and the incredible sense of both privilege and how humble to realize that we had the opportunity of a being able to be there and that incredible landscape, and and have the opportunity to see such a rare species, and and also be there with our with our with our colleagues from Rwanda, and and Dr Paul Labala from Kenya, and and Prince klaim A

from the Democratic Republic of Congo. And I mean, we had this this team of of people and the sense of excitement and connection, and so I couldn't agree more that, you know, hope is Hope is not lost. Hope is essential to UM to what we do UM. It is a there is a real sort of weight to the world right now, with climate change and the bio diversity crisis and the strife that we're witnessing around the world.

I think that there are lots of reasons to hope, and that one of the one of the one of the things that I've noticed is that we can we can get into this sort of paralysis of um a feeling like the problems are just too big to solve.

And you know, I've tried really hard to think through I mean, part of my job at that Conservation International is to identify and prioritize what are the sort of most important projects for us to be working on, and and and and you can have this moment of paralysis of like, well, it's all important, and where do you start and and so you really do have to, you know, kind of roll up your sleeves and say, I'm you know,

we're gonna go. We're gonna go. We're gonna do what we can in the places where we've got the best opportunity any to make a difference. And and there's lots of tools out there for us in terms of conservation evidence, and you know, prior to the conservation standards, and lots of really smart people on this planet are are working, you know, really hard to find the ways to give us the best chance of success to do conservation. Well.

At the end of the day, you gotta get out there and you gotta do the work, and you know, collaborate with people and and and then when you have those moments where that hard work pays off and you're standing in the forest and you see a bat that looks really weird and nobody has seen for forty years. It is, you know, it's it's nothing short of incredible. And then you get to let it go again and it flies back out into the forest and it doesn't know that it's like super rare and that nobody's seen

it for forty years. Like it's just I've been doing its thing and it and then so there's also the sense of the responsibility of going to make sure that it can continue to do that, and and that it's got that watershed and it's got that forest to keep living out. It's it's best life. Like I said, it's so wonderful. I will have pictures of this bat in the show notes or you can google the Hills his

horseshoe bat. And but its face is just it's incredible, and there's something I mean, there are there are a lot of beautiful animals, but to have because it has like these these folds and flaps on its face. And I assume that the horseshoe name comes from these like

horseshoe like folds. Yeah, the horseshoe shape to its nose. Yeah, that goes down and like it looks like a chin almost yeah, yeah, and it's it's you just want to ask, like, do you know you're so fascinating looking or are you just you know, do you want do you understand how like we're just captivated by your face and the fact we haven't seen you in forty years And but now it probably flies off and goes off to find another

another bug to eat. It's an insectivore, right, Yeah. Yeah, We're gonna take a quick break, but when we return, we are going to talk more about bats with Dr Frick. So we're back, and I think we are. We're amongst bat lovers right now, probably people who are listening to the show, I would imagine our ball lovers. But a lot of people are somewhat afraid of bats or are

worried about certain misconceptions that they like. I think a lot of people may have the misconception that most bats are like vampire bats, despite the fact that in fact, those are the least common species of bats and are vastly outnumbered by every other type of bat in the world. Um, and they're so people think, oh, a bat is going to try to bite me or suck my blood. Um. But there are also fears about bats transmitting diseases like rabies. Um, So what should people who have a fear of bats

know about them? There's really no reason to fear bats. They're um. Most people won't have the opportunity or pleasure to get to see bats ever, which is almost a shame because they're incredible. If you get a chance to ever see a bat up closed, you would quickly see that they have You can google images on the internet, I guess, um, and see their Their faces sometimes look

you know, unusual, like our Hill's horseshoe bat. Um. And that's due to their interesting adaptations for their nocturnal lives. You know. The flying foxes in particular, are are pretty heart melting in terms of um, you know, big eyes so they don't go locate in you know, kind of standardly cute faces. Videos of flying foxes babies who are in rescue eating grapes and bananas, and it's it's the most heart melting thing you can see. Yes, I think

that some people call them sky puppies. Um, but you know, they're there's really not much to fear that, you know, bad bats have gotten a bad rap for a variety of different associations. I think, you know, things that are associated with being nocturnal sometimes you know, activate sort of different kinds of fears, you know, and then you know they're vampire bats obviously are a very interesting Uh. There's only I think there's three species of vampire bats and

the four hundred and Um. They have amazing adaptations because they are sanguinivorous, which is the fancy word for they feed on blood. Um. But they don't suck. Actually, I have like shark teeth and they make a little nick and then they lap up the very surgical delicate right. Um. And uh, you know, at some point that got all conflated with you know, um vampire mythology, even though vampi our beats live in central uh in South America, not

anywhere near Translbania in Europe. But and then the other thing you know to know is that you know, like a lot of wild mammals, bats can be a natural um reservoir for rabies. They can carry rabies virus, which

you know is deadly in humans. So if you had the misfortune of you know, getting bit bitten by a bat, you should definitely go uh to the hospital and get your post exposure rabies vaccine because if you contract the disease then it's it's fatal, but there's you can get the shots and it will boost your immune system and

you'll be fine. So one of the reasons why bats are so associated with rabies is that it's the incidence of rabies and that isn't necessarily that much higher than in some other types of mammals like raccoons or skunks. But the chance that a person in the in the public comes across a bat might be if it's on the ground outside their garage or something, and the chance that there's something wrong with that, that that that that is sick is relatively high, because it wouldn't be there

if it was healthy. So somebody like me who's out capturing bats in their wild environments, you know, most bats are healthy and fine. Everybody who works with bats does have pre exposure um shots for rabies, but there's no reason to necessarily be scared of them. So you should know what the public health guidances and if you know, you come in contact with the bat, and it's best not to touch it with bare hands, but to call an animal rescue. But it's not like bats are out

looking to harm us. No, No, I mean there's only and I think out of the three vampires and that species, there's only one who's ever been even recorded having eaten human blood. And it's usually someone who's like near because they're they're it's the hairy legged beat and they're adorable by the way, the cutest little faces. And but there main source is chickens. So if someone is you know, lives on a chicken farm and is near these chickens, it it may just be sort of and not an

accidental but sort of an incidental thing happening. And so it's so they really don't they don't, but they don't hunt humans. They don't seek out humans specifically. Yeah, vampire bats don't hunt humans, and they occur in central mex Mexico down through South America. But yeah, it's not. The perception of that is way overblown from the reality. So, yeah, the other vampires are specialized on birds and and and

and most vampire bats feed on cattle yum nowadays. So yeah, yeah, and it's and they don't even it's not necessarily even uh too much of a threat to the cattle other then you know a little little cut they do on their ankles. But there could it could be well, but they can't transmit they can, yeah, they can transmit rabies. It is actually there's some economic cost to rabies transmission

of livestock. Um. That's a whole another another topic. But um, you know, luckily we have vaccines, and vaccines are highly effective against rabies. You know. Another another misperception is that you know, bats will like fly into your hair and all that kind of silliness. You know. I think one of the things that about bats is that you know,

they're they're flying at night, and they fly erratically. And the reason why they fly erratically is because they're really agile flyers and they're looking for insects out of the night sky and the um and so when you see about sort of fluttering and flipping around and looking like it's, you know, doing some crazy dance move, it's because it's honing in on an insect and then actually catching that insect with it has a a a membrane of in between its hind legs and it uses it like a

catcher's in net. Yeah, and then and then it you know, um, finds the insect with its mouth, so it does this like you know, quick little duck where then you know, get grabs the insect with its feet or its tail membrane and then folds up and grabs it. And and so that will cause the bat to look like it's

flying sort of out of control. And so if you were watching that and and and you know that it's at dusk, and you can't really see them very clearly, and so I think some of that erratic flight and um the fact that you can't quite picture what it looks like might play into some some people feeling scared

or something. But if you take a moment and realize that there's no it's not at all threatening to you, and that they're you know, cleaning up all the insects out of the sky around you, then it's actually beautiful

to watch. And then the other thing is that sometimes people will find um bats like up in crevices on the sides of houses or something, and and so you know, I don't know, if you know, if you can't see them clearly or something, and they look kind of tucked up in there, um, you know, there's no reason to be scared of them. But that's the other way that people will kind of experience bats maybe kind of like you're not expecting to see them and you're kind of startled. Yeah,

but there's really no reason to be scared. And they're they're really and the more you learn about them, the more fascinating in terms of just their ability to like we're talking earlier, like you sound, to perceive their landscape. They're eating insects, um and uh, provide you know, lots of services and they're cute and like yeah, and the you know, the nectar feeding bats that like slurp up nectar. They have you know, long tongues and their important pollinators

and yeah, they're they're very cool. So that actually leads me into some of our listener questions, and so Whitney asks, why do some bats have smooth noses and others little adorable snouts? So bat faces, like we've talked about, are really diverse. I know that face shape has to do with different dietary and hunting methods depends on whether the

bat uses echolocation or not. But it's it's interesting because it seems like there's not sort of one rule, like you only have a long snout if you're a nectar nectarivore um, or you only have a because like it seems that there are bats who have short faces who are frugivores and also long faces that are frugivores. So you'll have flying foxes who have relatively long snouts that are frugivores. But then you'll have leaf nose bats who

also eat fruit who have shorter faces. So it seems that these face ships, sorry, these face shapes are highly specialized. So maybe a shorter faced a shorter faced bat who is a fruit eater maybe eats harder fruit, so it has like more of a mechanical advantage with its jaw shape. Um. But uh, and you know, like we discussed with the Hills his horseshoe bat, that incredible face helps it in terms of echolocation. So there are some bats that have pointed faces or at least like a pointed kind of

like nose flat that may help direct echolocation. And so there are so many different factors that you have with these bats in terms of both their their diet, how they perceive the world, in terms of whether they're using echolocation, and very specifically, like what kinds of foods in their diet they eat. Are they eating hard fruit? Are they

eating softer fruit? Are they eating nectar? And so? Uh, you know, but as a as a bad ecologist, you must have seen like so many different types of bat faces, which I'm so astounded by, like how many different faces face shapes that they have. And so in your experience, like is there is there an easy answer to like the smoothed face versus longer face? I think you give

a great answer. You're you're totally spot on that it has has everything to do with diet, and it has a little bit and it well has everything to do with diet. And also your family tree. So in the neotropics, so in central in the America's there's one family of bats called the philas Domada and they are m the leaf nos bats, and so they have this very characteristic little you know, leaf knows that has this little leaf flap of skin. And so that's a trait of that

whole family. And then within that family, um is where we actually see an amazing adaptive radiation of diet diversity in bats. So most of um, most of bats are in the ancestral state of bats are insectivorous UM and echo heating and so all of the amazing diet diversity that we think of is mostly contained in the Philus domaday so not counting the flying foxes and interopid bats of the Old world. So all the nectar feeding bats, the forgiverrous bats, so much of the diet diversity that

we see is in that Philus domad day family. So the nectar feeding bats, the and and forgiverous bats, even the vampire bats are in that in that family um. And there's also insectivorous species in that family as well, and so some of that you know, the um the nose leaf anyway is a characteristic of that family. And then you also have bats in the Old World in

a different family. Uh. So, like we're talking about the horseshoe bats, they have different kinds of adaptations, and that characteristic not horseshoe aped uh nose feature is at the family level. And then the round leaf bats, which are in the Hippo Sidera dae family um, also have a very characteristic nose leaf shape that is the charactress of that family. So part of it is your you know, your family tree and then and then part of it is is your diet uh. And and what you're eating.

There's some great colleagues of mine who actually study the bite force of different bat species and looking at that bite force relative to the kinds of foods that they eat. So the things that you were talking about in terms of, you know, the hardness of the fruit and whether you're primarily drinking nectar or kind of doing both nectar and fruit or just eating fruit, um, all of those things will come into play in terms of your face shape and face features. That's that's really cool. I just I

love that they have. They express so much personality through their faces, and it really does. It is kind of an indicator of these like very different, interesting lives that they all need. And of course the flying boxes that don't echolocate have really big eyes. That makes sense. They're not using sound to to hunt hunt for prey or find flowers. They're using both vision and smell. So they also usually have like larger noses because they're using other

senses and that's what makes them sky puppies. Yes, so friend of the show Sean Baby on Twitter asks, my kid and I love a video where Australian bats dive bomb a crocodile infested river to get their tummies wet so they can suck the water out later. Are they

anomalies or do all bats drink like total maniacs. So one of the reasons that bats actually dive bomb sources of water, whether they're going to get their bellies wet or to like take little SIPs basically scoop up some water with their mouths, is that they cannot stop and land near water. Not only would it make them a prime target for predators, it is almost it's also very difficult or impossible for most species of bats to take

off directly from the ground. So most bats typically will go into flight by dropping down from a perch and uh flying. They don't really it's not like a bird where they often will take off from the ground. Now, there are notable exceptions to that. I believe some species of vampire bats and certain insectivores are able to kind of do a running hop thing and get off the ground and take off into flight. But dr frick do you know, like what is sort of the typical method

for bats to drink water? Yeah, so most bats will drink on the what we call drinking on the wing, and so they'll fly down and they won't necessarily dip their bellies, but they'll just app at water as they as they fly. Most bats need to drink free drink water. Um. There are some like desert adapted bats that can get water from their diet but then don't need access to standing water. But water is really important for most bats.

In fact um, if you've ever worked in the desert as a bat biologist, you just you know just how important it is, because that's one of the best places to catch bats is to um put up your missnets over a water hole, and that's will also be attracted

to water to hunt for insects too. That a lot of a lot of insects emerge from the water where they there's a larval stage of the insect in the water, and then they'll come to the surface and and basically emerge in the flying form, will take off, and bats are looking for those emergent aquatic insects and we'll scoop those up actually with their feet off of like an osprey hunts for fish. And so that's you may see bats going over water, and they may not necessarily just drinking.

They may also be foraging for insects. So you're right that there are some species that can't take off from the ground, but I wouldn't I'm not sure i'd characterize that most species can't take off from actually say that not being able to take off from the ground is probably more of the exception than the rule, and and certainly some species are much better at it than others. Vampire pats are particularly good at sort of hopping and levitating up off ground. Palid bats that hunt scorpions on

the ground are also really good at taking off. A lot of we look at the foraging sort of strategies of bats based off of their wing shapes, and bats that have broad wings are really maneuverable and they're more likely to be able to kind of take off, whereas bats with narrow wings are more adapted for fast, high flying things like the Mexican freetail bat or other freetail bats, and they have a harder time taken from the um. But you're but you're asolutely right that it it doesn't

You've got the advantage of flight. It doesn't make a lot of sense to land and crawl up to the surface of the water. And a lot of bats are already you know, foraging for insects, and so the ability to just take a sip on the wing um is a much better strategy and drink for the road, or I to like drink like maniacs, So I'm going to use that. And that was Dr Winnifred Cheap, scientist of

Bat Conservation International. And that was the tail of the rediscovered Hills's horseshoe bat, once thought to be extinct, but is in fact still flap it around. So before we go, we've got to play around of your favorite animal podcast game, Guess Who's squawking? Every week I play a mystery animal sound and you guess who's making that sound. So last week's hint is you may find these little dudes boogieing to an imaginary beat, but it's probably for the prey

that lies deep beneath their feet. Yes, yes, yes, can you guess who's squawking? Well, congratulations to Joey P. Aussie and Trish H who all correctly guessed it was the sound of the American woodcock. So the American woodcock a k a. The timber doodle is a small bird found in North America. While it's technically a shore bird related to sandpipers, woodcocks live in forested areas with a long, wedge shaped beak, brown bark like plumage, and compact egg

shaped frame. It is a serious cutie with a serious appetite for worms. Woodcocks rock back and forth as they hunt for worms, which biologists speculate maybe away for the birds to scare the worms into moving, which makes them easier to feel with their feet and catch. The male woodcock tries to woo females with their distinctive peat sound that they make during mating season. They will also fly high up into the sky and zoom back down to earth in a serpentine pattern to try to dazzle potential

mates with their death defying stunts. As mating season tends to be in the spring, if you live near forested habitats in Atlantic Canada, the East coast of the US, or in the Midwest, you may just see a male woodcock doing his sky dance. So on to this week's mystery animal sound. The hint don't jump to conclusions with this sound. M M. Can you guess who's making that sound? If you think you know the answer, right to me at creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also

on Twitter at creature feet Pod. That's f e f et that is something very different, or at Katie Golden, where I write M Katie Thoughts. Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review, I will deeply appreciate it. I read all the reviews and I love them and I cherish them. And thanks so much to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo. Lumina Creature features a

production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey Guess what where if you listen to your favorite shows, See you next Wednesday.