On The Origin of Feces

a lot about animals. And later I'll be joined by the real life Batman of Mexico, Dr. Rodrigo Medelline to talk about glowing poop and long nose bats. But first joining me today to talk about all sorts of craft is friend of the show, podcast producer and writer Joel Monique Cog. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm elity to talk about poop bal d Yes, I'm excited about this one. Excited that you're here to talk about poop with me. So poop is not always just disgusting.

Sometimes it is a scientific marvel and it actually teaches us a lot about animals and uh, later on in the show, we're gonna talk about glowing bat poop, which is super exciting. I already did the interview, uh and I think it's really fun, So so be pumped for that everyone. But first we're going to talk about one of the world's earliest poopers, very ancient animal called the comb jelly. Have you ever seen a comb jelly? But

I'm googling right now? Is it okay for the listeners? See? Oh, corn jelly, come jelly, comb jelly com c l n e j l y No, no comb like a hair comb, homb jelly. I just want you to know that if you type and comb jelly, Google knows what you're talking about. It will direct you to the right page. Oh oh they're beautiful. Yes, they look ancient, they look like aliens.

They are clearly about that pride because they glow rainbow tendrils. Yeah, a little late for Pride months, but hey, every month should be Pride months, and it never ends unless you're a corporation. Here Pride all the right exactly. Corporations took down their pride flags already, not not comb jellies. It's Pride year for comb jellies. But yeah, they are beautiful, beautiful marine invertebrates. They may look a little bit like jellyfish,

but they're actually not jellyfish. They're not They're not a what a jellyfish is called, like a Nigerian. They're actually in the phylum Tinophora. And instead of using undulation like jellyfish use to move, they have a bunch of cilia, which are tiny mobile hairs lining their spaceship like bodies.

So there's shape kind of like a spaceship, like a transparent alien spaceship that has led lights, shimmering rainbow l e d s that just like going sort of a wave down their backs, and that's actually the silly and moving in synchrony, and as the light refracts off the cilia, it looks just like led lights going down like you know those Christmas lights that kind of go in a wave where like one light trends on in the next and prossessionally lights. Yes, exactly, that's what these look like.

And that's because of these hairs waving in this wave so that they can move forward. But then the light refracts differently, and some of them have bioluminescence, so the bioluminescence will then refract differently through these silia as they move so they look like a glowing spaceship. It's an incredible there, seriously gorgeous features. Star Trek really should have

been on this already, and maybe they have. I am not the most start check knowledgeable person on the planet, but they really do look like spaceships, and they really are beautiful. I don't want to jump ahead. But I'm also seeing something called a blood belly comb jelly. Oh wow, do you know about this? Um? Let me look it up. I'm not sure. Oh wow, yeah, no, I I think I may have seen these guys before, but I didn't know they were called blood belly. It's so, it's okay.

If you think about the comb jelly as the like peaceful pride like gorgeous angular spaceship conquering the cosmos with its beauty. Uh, the blood belly is like a evil, demented step sister, uh, who will devour your soul. It has no qualms about it to survive. Yea, which is I think biologically accurate. Now, those are beautiful. Yeah, they kind of look like they look sort of like a comb jelly, but then they have kind of a kind of a pair of balls sort of dangling down and

back just hanging out with with their weird forbs. You know,

still very like alien technology like stuff going on. The reason I bring them up on this poopisode is that we've actually talked about them before on the show the episode Think Outside the Butt, where we talked about animals that don't have conventional butts, and we talked about a species of comb jelly that is one of the only animals to not have a permanent anus, where they seem to have what's called a transient anus, where they sprout

a butt wherever they need it. Oh and yeah, which is really interesting but exactly, I love that idea, just like, you know, you don't always need a butt, you just get one when you need it. You know, absolutely most comb jellies do just have a mouth and an anus. But that isn't what scientists originally thought. They used to think that comb jellies did not have butts, that they

only had a mouth and they had no anus. Uh, So basically they there is this concept that there is a linear progression of the evolutionary development of the butt, where you started out with very simple ancient animals like comb jellies that would only have one whole mouth and they'd eat stuff through the mouth and then vomit it back up, and then later on more complex animals started

to develop the butt. But what seems to actually have happened is that comb jellies do have butts, and the evolutionary path of the butt is a little more complex, where they maybe gained a butt and then like later on, some some later animals seem to have lost it, like I'm talking about other marine invertebrates. So so there is a more circuitous path in terms of the evolution of the butt than we used to think, and that paradigm the butt haroadign was completely changed by this knowledge that

comb jellies actually do have butts. That's a serious Joe think to laugh about. It's serious because because you know, I'm thinking about it on a human and like could have but be on your hand or on your head chest but side, but it could have. Yeah, it's you know, the fact that we've got a butt on the butt end. Uh, it's probably not a coincidence. It has a lot to do how we start out as this kind of like little like basically a donut and grow from that. You know.

It's it's really interesting how they actually discovered that comb jellies do have a butt, because again, the conventional wisdom used to be that they did not have an anus, that they only had a mouth and they'd eat food and basically poop out of their mouths. But I know, gross, but more recent researchers found that was probably not true.

And in fact, it seemed to be that the pastor researchers who thought that they like pooped out of their mouth, they're actually just kind of throwing up their food because these researchers were not feeding them properly, so they would feed them improperly and these poor little comb jellies couldn't eat the food, so they'd regurgitate it. But when fed properly on the right diet of little tiny baby fish,

these comb jellies were able to eat and poop. And for these researchers to demonstrate this very clearly on video. But they did is they fed the comb jellyfish genetically modified fish fry so baby larval fish that glowed red. So have you ever seen glow fish in a pet store? Yeah,

like a like a pet smart or something. They're like they look like highlighter markles and fish had a baby and they're these glowing fish, and people have this constant up that that they like inject them with die or something, and that's not the case. They actually are genetically modified to have this glowing hue. So they have these genetically modified fish, and comb jellies will eat small fish, so so like larval fish and the comb jellies is diet

of these glowing red fish. Therefore the comb jelly poop would be glowing red. So they could show clearly on video them eating the little larval fish, the tiny fish, and seeing the fish scales go through the digestive tract on the comb jelly and then come out there butt all on camera, all in its glowing red glory. The thing scientists the animals through. Why are you filming this animal pooping that definitely crosses a line. I feel like on the list of priorities for comb jellyfish, it's privacy

is probably pretty low. I'm loving these glow fishes like a creola cran box came to life, but like I love a fish. I was looking at glowfish teches and they have cool color names for all the electric green, sunburst, orange, cosmic blue, moon rise, pink, and galactic purple is obviously my favorite marvelous mom Just like lipstick colors, Yes, start fire red. It always feels like they're going to run out of creativity when it, in fact, I feel like

they're already there. It's they just really are grasping at straws when they're trying to name various shades of red with lipstick, like cherubic cherry and you know, oh god, um. Sometimes they ridiculous red, flaming hot, anything that has to be with flames, any fire they've done. My favorite red in nail polish colors opis waitress red. It is so good. If you think about like a nineteen four these waitress who had red painted nails, it's exactly color, just bold

and fun funky. I think I am wearing the color red of digested glowfish red from from Perfect. So this

was great reason. It's it's always amazing to me when researchers come up with an idea of you know what, we can't it's hard to see their poops, so let's just make it glow, which will actually bring up again later on in the show when we have our interview with Dr Medain, But before that, I do want to talk about zoos and the struggles that zookeepers have with taking care of animals health, which is sometimes more complicated than you would initially think because one thing they have

to do is they have to keep track of animal poop to see like the animals health. And I don't want to be a zookeeper anymore, thank you. I would not, like I stopped wanting to be a zookeeper as a kid when I heard about what penguin poop smelled like, because I love the idea of being a zookeeper and being with the penguins. But it smells like decomposing fish, because that's that's what it is. And it's just I already I can't honestly, like, I can't even smell tuna,

Like can't tuna. I can't smell without like passing out like that fishy smells too strong for me. And then it's like, oh, if I my my dream job of like taking care of penguins, but I would constantly be vomiting because of the penguin poop smell, I can't do it.

I'm sorry, I'll have to appreciate the penguins from Afar, but yeah, so poop is very important diagnostic tools for zoos, and they will test poop for hormone levels to keep track of things like whether an animal is pregnant, whether the animal has hit puberty, if it's healthy, if it's got a normal hormone levels. But the problem is you can't tell one turd from another, like when you when you do it, it doesn't come with like a name tag like poop this poop courtesy of Katie or whatever

for example. So if you like want to track say like Percy the Polar Bears poop, uh, you don't know if it's Percy the polar Bear poop or Penny the Polar Bear poop. Who knows who's poop it is? So unless you happen to like catch them in the act of pooping and then run in and grab the poop. But I think there are a lot of protocols. You can't just like jump in the polar bear pin right

after it's done a duty. So it's a lot better if you can just wait until they're done pooping and then go in when you know when it's safe and then grab their poop. But how do you tell the poop apart? Joel, you make it, You make it glitter. Yea, yea, I love glitter. So to tell the mystery pooper is in a zoo, they will give the animal they want to track a diet of their normal food with edible glitter. Sometimes they use bright, colorful beads. Sometimes they use food coloring.

These are additives to the food that are harmless, just get passed through the digestive system, but it will make their poop colorful, sparkle and glittery and easy to spot. So they the additive depends on the texture of the food, so they'll use food coloring for like wet food. They may use beads that they put into like meat, but glitter is a really popular one because it's texture. It doesn't really change the texture of the food. The animal

will still want to eat it. So they feed a specific animal like a slab of meat that's got some glitter in it, and then when they poop it out, it's glittery poop, and then they know who'se poop that is. I love it. I like the idea of thinking. But he's like, oh, oh the blue glitter, great, great leo, it's doing good. Next, Oh my gosh. And you know somebody who has eaten plenty of glitter, both before it was supposed to be and after they started adding it

onto like cupcakes and things. I agree that it does not too much change the texture of your food and is still delicious. Joel, I have to ask you, why why would you eat glitter? Because I have three and I wanted to sparkle on the inside and the outside. Didn't make your poops glittering? Don't remember, but I'm sure that it did. You ask my mom now, like when you were wiping my butt, Uh, you have any ate sparkle? I remember eating a crayon when I was a kid,

and you know, they basically just come out. Yeah, you know, on the other end, they're wasty and they just slapped right out and it will be the color of the cranny eat. So, children, that's not an invitation. You you know, had to know that, and or and or adults listening to this show don't. This is not an invitation to eat glitter and crams. I'm not your mom, I can't tell you what to do. But legally speaking, this is

not an invitation to glitter and crams. Just oh, you know, some kid is gonna start pooping out some glitter and say, like I learned it from Creature feature. Listen, you did learn it here, but you also got a hefty dose of knowledge that you should not yet that you were warned. Although I mean not saying again not to say you should do this. I think it does kind of just

pass through pretty harmlessly. I think you'd have to. I think you'd have to eat a lot of Like I could imagine if you ate like a lot of glitter, it could form an impaction. Ina. No, no, I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying I wonder how much glitter it would take to create a medical crisis. I'm gonna say probably like at least a cup, like on those tiny bodies, you know, if you're like five pounds, like a four or five year old eat a full

cup of glitter, that, yeah, that's not good. New parents might need to step in, would be it would be a fun surgery though, right like you you kind of like get in there. It's like surprise glitter. But don't eat glitter, guys, unless you're a polar bear at the zoo, in which please do eat glitter because zookeepers need that to see if you're pregnant to eat what's being fed to you animals. Okay, those zookeepers take care. They love

you and they just want you to be well. My dog eight I think a cupcake rapper once and it just came out on the other end like it was as if she was presenting to me her turd as a cupcake, like here you go, fresh from the butt. I sorry, I got gris out by fresh from the book. I got I got stopped immediately as like, and I just pictured dairy queen and it was a mess. It's thank you. I apologize for that image, but there it is.

I can't take it back. Now. That was funny. Well, we're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, I will be joined by Dr Rodrigo Medeen, who is a bat ecologist and known as the Batman of Mexico, and he has some very interesting bat facts as well as a story about glowing bat poops. The stay tuned for that. So I have the honor to interview someone who is known as the real life Batman

of Mexico. He's a professor of ecology and conservation at the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has been tracking the migration of lesser long nose bats in order to help conserve the species and save them from endangerment. But in order to do so, he's employed an incredibly innovated method of tracking their movements, and it involves seemingly magical poop that glows. You can see him in action on PBS's Nature The Batman of Mexico.

Welcome to the show, Dr Rodrigo Medine, Katie. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be talking to you today. Thank you so much for joining us. I am as excited as if I am meeting a superhero, the real life Batman. I love the work that you do with bats. I'm a big fan of bats. I'm sure most of my listeners are also big fans of bats.

But often, just in general, they kind of lose out on the popularity contest when we're talking about animals, Like there are a lot of cute animals that everyone loves, a lot of larger species that are more gregarious, more popular, but baths kind of tend to lose out a lot of the time. So why are you so interested in bats? And was there a moment that you fell in love with bath. Well, yeah, I mean this is uh, this

is a case of unfairly treated animals. We know that there's a lot of animals that have a negative public image, from snakes, two spiders, to scorpions, to charge the bats. None of those two more for your everyday well being than bats. Bats are connected to your everyday life, from whatever we eat, to whatever we wear in clothes, to whatever we drink. So uh, that started in a very

early time in my life. When I was thirteen, the first bat came into my hands, and I really saw that this was the underdog, the real underdog, in which they take all of the things that people can think of and they apply them to baths. Bas have a false reputation of being the devil send voice, and to being filthy and to convey all kinds of diseases to us.

None of that is true. So I've devoted my life since then to to learning about baths, digging about their natural history and showing the incredible services that they provide two ecosystems and to us, and then connect to people and explain to people that they really are good nocturnal friends. Now you mentioned they're even connected to things like what we drink and what we eat. How are bo involved

in that? Bats are the single most important best controllers of any agricultural crop, from corn to cotton, two chili peppers. Everything that you eat is connected to baths because bats consumed between ten and thirty percent of the best that are going to affect your crop. But that is that, that doesn't stop there. If you like drinking tea, if you like drinking coffee, bats are also the controllers of the of the most important pests of tea and coffee.

And furthermore, what would I say as a Mexican you, I'm very proud of my heritage, and we have tequila and mescal that are going through a boom all over the world. But we have them because bats are the key essential pollinators of a gas, the plant that is used to produce tequila and miska. Now, when people think about bats, I don't think they think pollinator. We usually

think of bats as being maybe insectivores. A lot of people think of vampire bats the the really the only species that drink blood, but they're pretty popular in terms of our general culture. But we don't think of bats as being pollinators. We think of like bees or maybe even other insects, but that bat doesn't come to mind. In fact, I think a lot of people don't even realize that some bats have a role in pollination. So

can you talk a little bit about that. What species of bats are pollinators and how how do they do this and how have they evolved to become pollinators? Sure, I mean, there's an astounding number of species of baths in the world. Most people don't have an idea that there's more than fourteen hundred species of bats in the world. Three out of every four of those bats feed on insects.

But then we have twelve percent of the bath that feed on nectar and pollen, ten percent of the bath that feed on fruits and dispersed the seeds of many many plants, mostly tropical plants. In fact, we've demonstrated that the tropical rainforests rely heavily on the bats dispersing their seeds a lot more than any bird. And then there's a few bats, maybe fifteen or so species that feed on the flesh of other vertebrates, including little birds and rodents and other bats. And out of the more than

four species, there's only three that feed on blood. And because of these three, all the risk goes in uh, and people think, oh, no, that animal is going to suck about. Not absolutely not true, not true at all. That's what's always been both interesting a little frustrating to me is that there are so many species of bats,

and most of them aren't blood drinkers. But we have just this one image of bats that people think of like little bats with dangerous little teeth that are gonna bite you, which isn't even true of most vampire bats. They are not even They don't even kill their prey, they don't suck them dry. They just lick at a little wound. They're they're pretty harmless to well, completely hard less of humans, really, But we don't have the sense

then of how incredibly diverse bats are. And I want to talk a little bit about the lesser long nose bats because I think they defy the popular conception of what a bat looks like. I think they're adorable. I love how they look because they have this long muzzle, which makes them, in my mind, particularly cute. They have

very cute little faces. But can you describe, like why do they have that long muzzle, which kind of goes against what you would think about would look like, sure, I mean the lesser long knows but and the Mexican long knows bats are two bats in the in the genus Leptononicities that are very very cute. That is the word, katie. They are cute, and I don't I don't use the word likely they will win over anybody who sees a

lesser aloness, but are going to be immediately won over. Uh. You know, most wild animals, regardless of it being an apostum or a raccoon or a snake or a bat, if you handle them, they are going to bite you. They're going to try to descend themselves, right. Well, not the case with a lesser loan. You handle them, and they're so sweet, they're so incredibly tame. They have such well good temper that you can handle them, of course

with care, et cetera. But you can see that all the interest that it is going to their to their flowers and feeding on the neckar and being covered with pollen, that's what they want to do. So they do have there about an ounce less than an ounce of a bat um, so it's less than a foot from wind tip to wing tip, and then they have that long snout with a little what we call a nose leaf at the tip. That loan snout is needed support the very long tongue that they extend into the flowers that

they visit. And then their tongue at the tip has a little bristle. Their popili have become little hairs, so they they scratched the end of the bottom of the of the flower to extract all of the neckar there, and they're very effective. Think of mopping the end of the flower. And they're mopping the flower like that, and and and and using the negtar. And agave is have actually learned to use bats for their for their benefit. In fact, i gaves have enslaved the bats to to

to do the service that the gas need. Twelve million years ago they started go evolving. Now evolutionarily, agaves have learned that if they produce necktar that is a little below the concentration that the neat, the bats are going to come back and come back and come back and come back and come back. And the more they come back, the more pollen that they're going to take away. So it's actually the aga is feeding them very little so that they keep them trapped in slate and coming back

all the time. It's like a slot machine for bats. Very addictive, exactly. I love that, and I love these pictures. I actually think one of the pictures I've used on the show before has been taken by you. It's these bats just completely covered in pollen. They look they look

yellow because they've become so covered in pollen. But they've been essentially tricked, or maybe it's it is somewhat beneficial to the bats as well to get that nectar, but they have been tricked into doing the reproductive duties for the flowers. And you mentioned that that agavies have co evolved with bats. How dependent are the plants on the bats? Is how of have turned into slaves two bats? Because

basically what of evolutionarily? Again, what they've done now is that their flowers open at night number one, and then the little answers the bags where the pollen is opened half an hour later. Then people people are gonna say when you hear when they hear your show, they're going to say, no, no, no, that's not true. I have seen bees and hummingbirds and all kinds of other things around the gaby flowers. Yes, they are there in the morning. Now the the gave pollen lives for about twelve hours,

so they open at say seven pm. By seven or eight am, the pollen is dead. It doesn't matter if if a bee comes back, if humming bird comes back and discovered with pollens, a poll is dead and it's not going to pollinate the other flower. So it's only bats that can pollinate them. Uh. That has turned into a really key element in the biology of these two things, in that they co exist in space. Wherever you have a garbage, you have nectar baths, and where you have

nectar baths, you have a gas. Always they're connected hand in hand and they really rely on each other. So if you take one out of the equation, the other one is really going to suffer. Right It is going to be a big, deep reaching effect. In fact, right now we're working with the tequila and the mescal producers to tell them that they need to allow a certain amount of a gaves to flower for the benefit of their own crop, for the benefit of the gaves. So

we're producing bad friendly tequila and bad friendly mescal. Which these people are investing their own agave is because they have realized that without bats they're not going to have to killa for long Well, that's not good. So even if you don't like bats, but if you like tequila, you should care about the baths absolutely, although I can't imagine not liking these, especially the lesser long nose baths

are so adorable. And you have been tracking the migration of the lesser long nose bats and the amount of distance that they travel. Why is it important to learn like the distances that they travel. Since bats are nocturnal and not like birds that you can see them during the day. You can even put GPS units that have little solar panels on them so that the batteries recharge and recharge and you shared and they continue to transmit. We cannot do that with the bats. So we know

a lot less about the migration of these bats. We know that they migrate between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred kilometers from central southern Mexico to northern Mexico on the south of the US, but we don't know what are the stepping stone caves where they stop, and we need to make sure that those caves are also perfected. So we've been using all kinds of different tricks and trinkets and things to try to pursue these this information and

these bats along their way. Well, one of my favorite tricks that you've used is making their poop glow, which I absolutely love. We love to talk about poop on this show because I like to destigmatize animal poop. I think that it can teach us a lot about evolutionary biology and if we can get past it like, oh, poop, well that's kind of gross, it's actually really fascinating. And I love what you've done in your research with bat poop. Can you describe why, why the glowing bat poop? What's

going on there? Why have you done that? And how you know? I was with my students from not a Bar actually talking about how could we follow these baths on one night and one night only, trying to understand not necessarily in the context of their migration, but the actual movements during the night. Remember that these are all lap dating female females who have their babies in the cave, right. Well,

we we thought of using ultra violet fluorescent powder. It's a really crazy thing, but we thought if we could sprinkle the emerging baths with ultra violet urescent powder and then capture them in the feeding grounds where the columnar cacti are that are expecting the path to come and show that they actually have that ultravolar fescent powder. We're going to show that these these baths for coming from this cave that are visiting those columnar cacti fifty kilometers away.

And then my students were stationed there at the at the Sua field. They were capturing those bats and sprinkling them with a different color ultra violet florescent powder. So we were sprinkling and this is I'm sorry, my friends, I'm going to disappoint you. This is very high tech that is beyond any love in the world. And it's called kitchen calendars. We use kitchen calendars to sprinkle the

emerging bats with yellow glowing fluorescent powder. And that was thousands and thousands of bats that we were marking with that. And then my students have fifty kilometers away with the Colonna actor. They were capturing the bats and making sure that they indeed have yellow glowing powder, and yes they did, but we also needed the reverse We needed to show

the reverse movement. So I told them to put the bats, the capture bats in a in a plastic bag, leaving the head out just the body and smear the entire body of the bat with blue glowing fluorescea powder and

then release them. And then the next evening, once the bus are gone, I'm gonna go into the cave and check with my UV light to see there's any blue glowing poop, and Dad is going to give us the hint that, in fact, these bats are going I'm back and feeding while flying, and they're doing all of this with fuel that is composed of sugar water. How do they do it? Big open question? Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, so they're they're licking this powder off their

bodies and then pooping it out. It's completely harmless to the bats, but then it gives you this very innovative way to track. You know, see, well, this individual bat that I know is gonna lick off this powder and then digest it and then have going poop, and then you can see where they've gone. It's really incredible. It's actually very pretty. I saw the video of the owing poop. It must feel like you're finding some kind of precious gemstone,

but it's but it's bat poop exactly. That wasn't feeling. You should have seen me jumping up and down. When we finally found blue glowing book inside the cave, it was amazing, the biggest finding. Yeah, but that is that is so interesting, such an interesting finding because I have now I'm not a bad expert, but I have read about how the way that bats had to evolve to go from you know, they didn't start out as flying animals. They were mammals that did not fly, and then they

had to evolve flights. So things like they're metabolism and immune system had to go through some very radical changes to allow the amount of energy that it takes for flights. So to see that in action that they can run on that, you know, just sugar water for so long, is really incredible. It's amazing. It's really we need to understand the physiology of these bats, because how can they bossing?

They travel fifty kometers one way, hunt kilometers round trip, and and and then suckle their babies and all this is on sugar water. So this of course helped us understand that we can jack knife those fiftometers to one kilometers linear movements, which is going to happen, Well, that's

what's going to happen when they migrating. They're going to at least jump from one step into stone cave to another one that is a hundred kilometers to the north, and then another hundred kilometers and so on and so forth. That narrows down our search for these stepping stone caves and then protecting each and every one of those dates you mentioned this is important for conservation. So what are some of the threats that bats are facing now that

are important for us as humans to really address? The main threat that is affecting the lesser known nons but and the Mexican long nons but is disturbance at the roost, intended and unintended, accidental or on purpose. People used to go to these caves and and disturb them with noise, with light, with movement. And you know that we were the ones. We were part of the group that enlisted this species in the Danger Species Act in the US and in the Mexican Federal List of Endangered Species in

the eighties and nineties. And then we started working towards the recovery, which included a big environmental education program that helped win over the people who were living right next to the biggest caves into partners, into into bad defenders that turned into twenty years later into the recovery of the species, and we in Mexico delisted this species in two thousand and thirteen, which is a good, big, good news that you know, the world needs good news in

conservation and in many other items. And then the US delisted this species in two thousand and seventeen, so we're not talking about a recovered species out of our recovery plan. So we can do this, we can save many other species in the world. I love stories like that because I think often people get this sense that, oh, we're just we're all doomed because we've already screwed up the planet. We've already caused too many extinctions, there's no going back,

And that's absolutely not true. There's so many things we can do. And I love the fact that you enlist people who are living near these habitats in order to help them actually preserve the species that they're neighbors with. I think that's really interesting. You were telling me the story about how you discovered some baths in a zoo at local zoo where you would not expect to find them in the zoo. Let you go in and do

some research on these baths. Can you talk a little bit about that, but yes, we have in this lab. We have a lot of interest in nectar feeding bats. And there's a student of mine who's working at the zoo, at the National Zoo in Mexico City, and he told me. He texted me one day, well, there's there's all of three columnar catti with flowers right now. I said, why don't you set up a camera trap and see if

there's any bats visiting. Next morning he showed me the pictures and yes, there's bats coming there that the cat i are in the enclosure of the brown hyena. So I had to talk to the to the director of the zoo. I said, do you think you can put your brown hyenas in the cage and then we can get into the enclosure and set up business and catch the bats there. And he did. Three days later we were there with our business, smelling like hyena all over

the place. And then we set up the business and we got a bunch of nectar eating bats in the midst of Mexico City, in the center of one of the biggest urban centers in the world. How on earth are these bats finding these three columns in in the

Mexico City Zoo. It's crazy. So now we have a whole program looking at how bats are using the botanical garden here the university as another zoo, by the airport, by the Mexico City Airport, Lots of light, lots of noise, lots of traffic, and the baths of air h I love that story because I think it is another testament to how much power we have in terms of we can help these species survive even amongst humans, with just three plants, just three flowers blooming in a zoo, and

they will come and find it. I know that species are very fragile at times. With the same time, they can be very resilient, and it just requires a little bit of effort on our part to to help them out. So I love that just just making sure that we realize that we share the landscape with other species. I'm giving them their space. It's so important, so important, Katie, exactly, now,

I absolutely agree. Before we go, I just want to close off by asking, you know, most of our listeners on the show I think are probably pretty big fans of bats. But as we mentioned before, I think bats get pretty rough treatment in popular culture and in the media, and people are often afraid or disgusted by them. They think that bats will like make a nest in their hair, which is a total myth. They think they'll bite you

and suck your blood, which just doesn't really happen. I think one thing I'm concerned about is that there's a lot of news about zoonotic diseases, and unfortunately, bats are a vector of disease sometimes with when it comes to zoonotic diseases. Um, So I'm kind of worried that because of this, and because of the pandemic, is going to be a resurgence in the sphere of bath seeing them as dirty and as vermin. What would you say in terms of how do we mitigate that fear of bath? Sure, well,

there's this is a very very important topic idea. I have to tell you that I have never worked harder to defend baths from attacks from everywhere than in the past year and a half, since the pandemic started. With the first declarations that this was a bad virus, which is absolutely not true. I started defending Bath left and

right all over the world. Now we know that the that the virus that has us all in our homes, in our offices, it said that are not being able to interact with other human beings that we used to. It's a human virus, it's not a bad virus that that moved into a human being and then all human beings are infected. You can only get COVID nineteen from another human being. It's not true that if a bad fly is by, or if you have bats in your belfry, or if you visit a cave, you're going to be infected.

That is absolutely not true. There is a species of virus that is closely related to this virus in some bats in China, but that doesn't mean that though that virus gave rise to this virus. That is as much as to say that since we share so much of our genetic information with chimps, chimps are rose from us and or we come from chimps. That's not true. We share a common ancestor. And that's the same case with

the with the covid virus and the bad virus. They share a common ancestor, nobody knows how far, how long ago, But that is not true. That that that one of them comes from the other not true. And even furthermore, if some crazy scientists would take the bad virus and put it in a human body. That bad virus would not be able to in it does because it doesn't have the proper structure on its outside surface to to

insert into ourselves. So that's not true at all. The real truth is that this is not come from baths. There are some other possibilities that maybe baths can give us some kind of of diseases, but it's the same case with rats and with songbirds outside your window, and even even with chickens. We know about avian influenza that

is affecting human beings as well. So it's in our best interest to preserve ecosystems, to protect the rainforest, to save a species, and that is going to make it so that it's a lot less likely that we're going

to get infected by any other zoonotic disease. The interests of conserving species, any interests of protecting humanity from zenotic diseases, are perfectly aligned because we just don't want to be over interacting with them to the point where we are, you know, constantly encroaching on their environment, and that will also reduce the chance of a zoonotic disease from from any animal. I think people have this sense that you know, we can only get zoonotic diseases from bats, but that's

absolutely not true. We can. In fact, you know, farm animals are a huge concern because of their proximity to humans and their environments. So so yeah, no, I think that's really important. Yeah, And is there any any like the last thing you want to say about bats? Do you get people excited? Absolutely? Everyone can do something to hell the gossip bat. Number one, Please share this story.

Please share the fact that you've heard today with your neighbors, in the all phase, with your friends, with your family. Just share that the knowledge that bats are so incredibly important for the functioning of ecosystems and for our own will be every day. Number two, if there are and there are, I know there are many bad conservation organizations in your area, considered donating, Consider getting in touch and volunteering and helping them along. They're having a hard time

right now. And then number three, if you're really into baths, start learning, start reading, and why not put up a bad house outside your home, in the local park, on the tree, up on the side of the building, wherever you can put bad houses that are going to help. But enormously so please just think of how much we owe to baths. And the next time you have you enjoy a glass of tequila, raise your class, and your first sip of tequila is going to be to the

health of bats. See the Health of baths wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is the Dr Rodrigo Medaine, who you can see on Nature's The Batman of Mexico. Thank you again so much for joining us. Thank you Katy