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You see Pocusha Energy dot E for fulltiesncies. Oh hey, it's still your friend's baby who looks like a turtle. Alli ward back with a part two episode of ologies. Hey, did you listen to part one of Chiropterology about bats? No? Then, what are you doing here? Would you walk into a movie eighty five minutes in with only half a bucket of popcorn? No? So go listen to part one. You're gonna hear all about cave tails and bat flimflams, debunkery and what is it bat? And how are they similar
to prime? And what makes them able to sleep upside down, and why should we protect them? And can you build a huge habitat that they'll come and live in? And who makes good bath houses? And how can you train one in some real tight spots that chiropterologists can get in, but real quick. Thank you to all the folks at patreon dot com slash ologies make it possible, and who submit wonderful fun questions every week, and also to anyone who rates and subscribes and keeps ologies up in the
charts among the science giants. Thank you so much for that, and for telling friends about the show, and of course for leaving a review for me to creepily read and choose one each week to thank such as For example, Nicole thirty four ninety six said, I've been listening to Ologies at work and it never gets old. I wish I had more time in the day to listen to every episode. I love the uniqueness of each episode. It
will keep you extremely interested in wanting to learn more. PS. Merlin is my new celebrity crush thanks to the Bats episode. Well thank you Nicole on behalf of myself and America's favorite bad expert. So this week Part two now, after a quick body break for both of us. We concluded part one of this massive three hour bat extravaganza, took
a little break. Merlin just went into his office and grabbed an iPad containing an archive of bat calls he'd recorded using an ultrasonic microphone, and he lent a play by play like Vince Scully of the bat world. And then we dove back into your patroon questions. So hang out, open your ears to hear bat conversations about echolocation and how to put up a bath house, and more info on white nose syndrome and bat coitus and habitats and his favorite species and what he does in his leisure time.
So settle in for the wildlife wizardry of human treasure and America's favorite chiropterologist, Doctor Merlin Tuttle. I mean, it's not every day you get down with the Marlin title.
This is just a.
Very slowed down recording. All there. That's a call of a free tail bad Now that one, he's just.
Coming up on some obstacles. No, he's actually chasing an insect that's his feeding. But he's locked in here. That's that's where he caught the insect. Now he's going back to what he was doing.
Okay. So that ultrasonic recorder is called the Echometer Touch and it's made by Wildlife Acoustics. They're not sponsors. They just make cool gadgets for scientists and friends to animals. And this thing can plug into an iPhone or an iPad. They're between like two hundred and three hundred and fifty bucks depending on how pro of a model you get.
And hey, holidays are coming up. How about everyone gives each other bad houses and maybe chips in for tiny ultrasonic microphones and some of Merlin Tittle's books in the new year. Also, what if you just want to see some bats now? First time question asker and part time at chiropterologist in Alaska, Dave Hayna asked about bat research instruments and I hope that he gets one of these things.
Maybe he already has one. Also, patrons including Iris McPherson, Lisa Butterscotch, Jamie Kishimoto all asked about the best way to spot one, and Nicole Bratt asked where can I go to give bats a tender little hug provided they want it? If you want to go bat spotting, if you want to see a bat, what's the best pace.
If I want to see a bat, Yeah, I'm probably going to do one of several things. First of all, I'm going to learn a lesson learn right here in front of my house. One night. I wanted to test this out when I first bought obtained it, and I went downtown and went all over places where I thought there would be bats feeding, and I couldn't pick up hardly at bat. They left town and went out to the agricultural.
Areas to be Oh wow.
When I came home, Paul wanted me to try and see if they're any in the yard, and I said, no, no, there wouldn't been out here. And it turns out that in our neighborhood, as in most neighborhoods, most of the street lights are yellow now and don't attract insects, but the one in front of our place is white. And I got such good recordings right standing in front of our house that the manufacturer asked to use them for promoting the product.
Merlin says that these are social calls, like I love Hey, so they.
Do chat a lot.
These are just telling them what's right in front of him, but much more detail.
And that's a type of sonar Yeah, with a.
Bat detector, you'd be amazed how many times I can go out and even with a spotlight, can't spot a bat, but I can hear at least one or two right close, Like where hell are they? First place I'd go looking for a bat if I didn't have a bat detector, would be a white street light or any outdoor powerful white light, because they attract insects the bats like to eat, is opposed to yellow lights that just expose into more alpidation and don't attract insects.
So go crash an insect party, but do not invite any owls.
The other thing I'd do if there was a river or a lake anywhere and there were boat docks and there were landing lights, white lights on the docks, I would look around those because it's a lot easier to spot bets out over clear open water, lying all over the water than it is up high around street lights. If you can find a white street light still, and that's hard these days. Sometimes you need to shield your eyes from the absolute center of the lights that doesn't
blind you. But then look around and you know sea bats. I used to take people up to the state Capitol in the springtime, and we'd sit there with a bat detector and listen. There wouldn't be anything for a while, and then we'd hear several bats coming into the zone and we'd look up and you'd actually see the wings dropping from the maths that they're eating.
Oh man, now, the wings just drop like snickers wrappers, right, Like they don't want those, They just want what's inside, right. I didn't realize that about mobs until I was helping renovate a kitchen up in Montana and found out that animals don't eat the wings. They just like to eat the right squishy part, right, Yeah, it's like candy wrappers. So in this case, it was a mice infestation on our family's little teeny tiny prairie house, and the mice just hmm huh, they yum yum it up with the moss.
But yes, they leave the wings around like swaps. Nobody wants them.
So there are other ways to sea bats too, you know, watch a cave entrance where they come out at night. I have often, you know, even been in a foreign country and just look up and see a woodpecker hole in a tree and wait and watch and see a bat come out.
Who's there.
If you're in the tropics, then most places you go, like anywhere in the tropics, you'll have various kinds of bananas growing banana plants. Bananas are bat pollinated. We didn't even get into this whole part of how important bats are pollinating economically important and yahologically important plants.
Yes, patrons such as Sophie Cosino and Laura Kinney who asked, aside from bats chowing down on insects, some bats are important pollinators, right, Gwen Boat simply demanded, what can you tell me about bats as pollinators? I want to know everything, Gwen Boat.
Here we go.
So if you're staying in a resort hotel in the tropics, and well, in fact, I've done this down and along the Gulf of California coast in Mexico co some of a lot of the resorts will have cardone and organ pipe and shirl cactus growing right up outside your door or in the parking lot, and there'll be lights around. And in the right season, bats come and pollinate the
They're mostly bat pollinated in bat sea dispersed. And I've sat in the back of a hotel room in Mexico and watched bats four feet away coming and pollinating flowers, and a lot of places will have bananas. You know, bananas flower over very long periods during the year, and you see a banana that has one of the stalks that hang down that eventually developed bananas on them.
Ps Merlin was like, what what is the word for a stalk of bananas? Like a stem of them? And I was like, got me, dude, but I'll look it up. So I did, and let me tell you, there were some search returns that are more than you bargained for when you type in banana plus anatomy. Now, at first glance, it seemed like the word we were looking for was just stem or stock of bananas. But then I saw that when it's a bunch of flowers, it's called an inflorescence,
which sounds like a new Calvin Klein perfume. Also, is now a good time to remind you that a banana is a berry? Are we still reeling from that pumpkin fact in the qu Curbatology episode? We are? Anyway, Bats love and inflorescence are a big stock of flowers to motor boat.
After sun goes down or starting a little bit before, you'll see one of these purple bracts will start opening. When it gets open, then the bats come and pollinate them. Now, there aren't any New World bats that originally depended on bananas for pollination, because bananas didn't come from the New World, they came from the Old World tropics. But all commercial bananas that we today come from bat dependent ancestors.
This has bananas.
So anywhere in the world, just about if you go out and you see banana plants growing in a yard, watch those carefully at dusk or a little bit after dusk, and you're very likely to see small nectar feeding bats coming in and visiting them.
So bats are important pollinators for another plant. And algave a clue of what that affects tequila. It's agave. The plant's agave. Oh, but if it grows a big stock of flowers in the middle, that's an inflorescence.
By Calvin, I mean even in Austin, I've laughed at myself before. I'm curious. I've never gone out to a really big, fully flowering agave plant in Austin watched it for a couple hours at night. There might be nectar bats here that we don't know about yet.
Now are you a night person or you a morning person.
I don't think I'm naturally a night person, but I've certainly had to adapt.
What happens when you're out doing nocturnal fieldwork, have like a thermiss of folgers.
What do you take with you?
I have been accused of trying to kill people from starvation dehydration. I used to go on trips in the caves. My most arduous cave trip took twenty three hours, no, and in one day we probably climbed six or seven hundred feet of vertical ropes and on things like that. You've got to carry all these heavy ropes, you're climbing gear, your research gear. You don't carry anything else you don't have to. So I tend to go really light on
pudding water. And I have myself been so desperate at the end of one of those long stays underground that one night I actually got down and drank water out of a puddle that had bat droppings in it.
You lived to tell the tail.
Do you get sick?
No?
Oh?
Do I need to remind you to never do this?
Okay?
Good?
So bring water or emergency water purification tablets or filters. Listen, you spend literally fifty years in the field and some shit's going to go down, but he survived. Just don't you do it?
Please?
So have you have you learned a lesson? Did you never let that happen again?
No?
I don't think anybody knows me would say I fully learned the lesson.
Oh that's like some Indiana Jones stuff right there. Oh my god.
One more thing on bat watching. Another way to see bats. If you're in at if you go to Caribbean Island to a resort or your on way's cruise ships. In the tropic subtropics of Latin America, you can often see fishing bats with up to three almost three foot wingspans catching minnows, under dog lights catching minnows. Uh huh.
Fisher bats.
They have big hind feet and laterally compressed toes so that they slide through the water of minimum friction. They have very sharp claws and they just dip down and snag the minnow out of the water.
That sounds like a pterodactyl or something. Okay, side note, I look this up and it's impressive as hell to use sonar to scoop up a fish with your feet. Well, also your hands are wings. But I did think it was funny that fisher bats were featured on one nat geodocumentary called I Mean they Catch Fish? So was the documentary made for fish? Anyway? Sounds like another fearmonger smear campaign.
A bunch of bulguano, You catch my drift. On the topic of guano, some people asked how you felt about the term batshit crazy.
I don't have any particular response to it. First of all, I firmly believe that if you're too much in love with the kind of animal, you can't really effectively conserve it. Okay, if you're too much in love with it, you're probably going to go out into combat with everybody that doesn't do what you think they should do. When I first started trying to say baths, virtually everybody I met hated them, and they would often tell me about how they kill large numbers of them. And I had to learn you
can't win battles without allies. That's a good point, And you can't get allies by fighting with everybody that disagrees with you if the majority disagree with you.
Welcome to Merlin's School of Conflict Resolution Wizardry. Let's role play shall we.
And so I would simply ask, well, I'm curious, why do you do that? Well, one tried to attack me on it. Oh really, I'm very interested in text, you know, and all my life staying baths, I've never been attacked or see anybody that was. So I'm really curious. Could you tell me about how this attack occurred? And we usually end up finding out that it was imagined and certainly unproven, or they say, you know, somebody told me, and I just asked we has this person ever been wrong about anything?
You're like, well, they're my drunk uncle and they're wrong about everything.
You just keep asking questions until finally, you know, what would you think of bats if you understood that just one of that species can catch a thousand mosquitos in an hour, or can catch enough potato beetles or cucumber beetles in a summer to protect your garden from all kinds of havoc. You know, I've had people that thought they had a terrible problem with bats in their attic, and I'd come and actually tell them how to get
the bats to leave. But when I'd finished telling them about what bats did and what they were like, they'd say no, no, no, we don't want to get rid of them. Now we're going to keep them.
Yeah, what do you do if you have bats in the attic? Is it okay just to leave him up there?
I certainly wouldn't advocate allowing bats or any wild animal to come into human living quarters inside. But there's absolutely nothing to worry about from a bath that wants to live behind your window shutter or lives in the attic and isn't causing you know, bat droppings. Too much of anything in the wrong place is not good. One guy put up a bathouse over his front door because he
wanted to look and see the baths every day. Well after they start got to be hundreds of him in his house and start dropping a half inch iguano, he was calling to know how he could move him.
Maybe just consider that before you hang it up. Perhaps,
So where do you put a bat box? A lot of you want to tips, A lot of you, such as Josie Gombas, Molly Henning, Trisha Lauren, Dean, Lauren Blanchard, May Merrill, Robin Kewan, Eva, Jen Henry, Addie Markin, Deborah Dillar, m Wings, Sarah Greer, Robert Pulcini, Carolyn Armitage, Liz Powell, Gretchen Herriford, Fernando Derek Allen, Ellie Abbott, Anna Thompson, Jennifer Alvarez, Julie Noble, Highly Stouschnoff, Tristan Kwasinski, Brandy Madeline Runyon, Charlotte Fielkegard,
Sarah Crocker, Amy Sally Colleini b and Kevin List, who asked, what's to do with bathhouses? Why do they need to be on a standalone pole above a certain height? Or Janet Sebastian Coleman, who asked, how do I befriend the bats? How do I get them to come and hang out in my yard? Or Jessica Shunk, who asked, how can I attract the bats to a bath house after we evicted them from our eves? Or will they forever tell
tales of our lack of hospitality? She sounds guilty as hell. Okay, so I looked it up on Merlin Tittle dot org. He has a whole guide about bat boxes write clickable there on his homepage. Read it and figure out how big of a bat box would be good for the species in your area, and even what color to paint
it depending on your region. So darker bath houses tend to retain heat and are better for colder climates, and ones mounted on a building retain more heat that the bats dig, and temperate and warmer climates might be better served with a bat box on a pole. Also, in general, bats aren't crazy about ones mounted on trees because predators can scramble right up the tree where birds of prey can hang out in a branch and snack on their
babies like popcorn shrimp. Also, apparently there's not much evidence that adding batguano will attract.
Bats faster, so don't deal with that shit.
And if you have an empty baththouse that just isn't getting a lot of action, it might be because it needs seven hours of direct daily sun, so it might need to be moved. Anyway, go to Merlin Toddle dot org. Figure it out, and then just breathe easy, he writes. If you know you have a good bathouse mounted in a good location, be patient. The bats will likely arrive eventually.
As long as as the you know the bats are on the outside the house you're on the inside. I think that's perfectly fine. And the old pest control operators that are trying to make a lot of money scaring people would tell you that they bred like rabbits, that they once got their sin established, you'd never get rid of them, and all that kind of thing. But not true.
Okay, Remember, bat breeding goes a little slow, and many of them have only one pop at a time, unlike a soft, squirmy pile of rabbit babies. So flim flam debunked. Also, it didn't strike me until later that I totally forgot to ask Marilin about bat jennies. What's happening in a chiropterology crotch? So Cassiana Brook wanted to know. Do bats have penises? How do they approcreate? Well? I looked it up, and they do have sexual intercourse with their penises and
vaginas they are mammals. Also, bat dicks sometimes have caraitonized spines on them that may serve like a barbecue brush, just to get out other bats sperm. Since, as we mentioned briefly, lat week bats love and orgy, now, Sam f said, I have recently read articles about fruit bats performing falatio and connolingis can you tell me more? Julie Berry put it more plainly, truth or flim flamm bats
engage in oral sex. Derek Allen, Friend to Bats, chimed in on the Patreon questions and said, I have seen this happen when I was a zoo volunteer. Both falatio and conna lingus have been observed. So yep, bats will get down and they will go down. That is a fact. Now, Tay Solis left the patreon plea, please talk about homosexuality and bats. We deserve gay bat talk. Tay, I looked it up and sure as heck ya, bats are gay.
Bats will bone when everyone's awake. They'll also bone each other while one is taking a snooze, which is reprehensible in human mammals. Researchers tasked with quantifying bat sex say up to thirty five percent of the sleepy sex is just man on man bat action.
What about lady bats?
Can we talk about their bat boobs?
Sure?
Can? Their bat boobs are sometimes low located in their armpits so that their one to two babies can just latch on, bite a nip, and go zooming through the sky. Now. Side note, if you google bat nipples, the first ten thousand or so returns are about George Clooney's beleaguered be nippled batsuit, which Batman director Joel Schumacher later explained that he had told the lead customer of the film, let's make it anatomical and then he gave photos of those
Greek statues. The costumer did the nipples, and he says, when I looked at them, I thought, that's cool. You know what have been cooler armpit nipples and maybe a same sex romantic subplot. Let's spice up these franchises people now. This next question, asked by not Clooney George, was echoed by Brian Wharton and Austinite Let's see George Ferar wants to know how did different types of bats evolve to have such varying food sources like fruit bats having fruit,
vampire bats blood. I was thinking it was like birds having different beak types, but fruit and blood are not the same in any way.
So hmm, Well, there are a lot of these things that we can't know absolutely, we can only speculate based on what we see today. But one that's particularly interested me. You go to my website photo gallery, you'll see pictures of bats paullinaying cacti, and one of them is some of those pictures are pallid bats pollinating Cardone cactus, the world's largest cactus. It gets up to fifty sixty feet tall.
And this is a bat that predominantly was thought for most of my career to eat only insects, scorpions, and centipedes. Then one night I'm out trying to catch a nectar feeding bat to put in my studio, and I watch a bat come in and obviously stick its head in the flower. It comes out with its head covered and
pallen gets caught in my net. Turns out to be a pallid bat, not the nectar bat that we thought was should have been their pollinating the plant, And later it's been well documented that pallid bats are major flower pollinators. Probably how this all started was palid bats love to eat things like sphinx moths that come to those same flowers. So a palid bat coming too a cardone cactus maybe just as likely to grab a sphinx moth or as it is to grab a drink.
Can I give you a night cup? So they're kind of like omnivorous A bit.
Sure, they are bats that are quite omnivorous.
Now, what about fuzzy blood guzzlers. Are they low key monster creeps or are they just like your friends on the Keto diet, but very hairy with wing hands.
Yeah, you can imagine that. You know, even vampires a little harder to figure out. But you know, they may have been attracted. You know, when you had these giant animals jabbing each other with tusts and things, there are probably some fair open ones and they probably attracted insects, and bats may have come to catch those insects and then found out that the blood tasted good. And before anybody wrinkles up because bats eat blood, let me point
out that's only been relatively recent years. It hasn't been popular with humans.
Yeah, I mean it's so you know, we're in Texas right now. There's a lot of people eating steak today. I'm sure that is eating blood.
So yeah, well blood sausage, you know, still probably pretty popular in some parts of the.
World, oh for sure. Now, of course, vampire bats were on the brains of many of you, including Caleb Patten, Jody Riek, No Fun, Nicole Radley, Megmahali, Dane Goding, Hayden Sloan, and first time question asker Kira Die. Do you think that the vampire bats are maybe where vampire's got the lore of being associated with vampire Transylvania types.
What's interesting is that the whole vampire legend occurred before anybody knew of a vampire bat. There are independent vampire legends in many parts of the world, from Europe to the Pacific Islands. There was this whole idea of vampires and drinking blood long before they found a bat that did it seriously. In the earliest vampire stories were people that were vampires, and in fact, people did, even in Europe, do really despicable things. Not even two hundred years ago.
There were major generals and people who, after battle would impale enemies by sticking them a sword handle up through their body and leaving them alive dangling on it. People who would fill a tub with human blood and bathe in it. They are all kinds of crazy things, horrible things done by people involume blood. But when we finally discovered a bath that ate blood like we still many of us do, all of a sudden we'd found the despicable, terrible, nasty thing.
You know what's not despicable sharing a meal now, since it's hard to sneak up on bird butts and mammal nipples to slice and lap up the blood. Sometimes vampire bats will get hungry if they don't feed for a day or two, so their friends will know that and they'll just barf up blood for them to share. Is there anything more goth and selfless than that? It's just like offering your neighbor hot talk, except you have eaten
it first. Not to mention the vampire finch. No one's out there worrying about finches.
Go to my website. Go to the photo gallery and look under vampires, and you'll find that at least one species of vampires is one of the cutest animals around. The bat is cute.
Merlin got up to get this beautiful little folk color pamphlet, smaller than a deck of cards, slim is a credit card.
He hands them out to strangers to spread the batfacts like how invaluable bats are as pollinators, that they can live up to forty years, that they save farmers up to twenty three billion dollars a year in pest control, that a bat can catch up to one thousand insects an hour, that one point five million live in Austin, that they form long term friendships that may involve blood vomit. So many great facts on this pamphlet except for the blood vomit part. But the front of the pamphlet has
his squish faced bat. It looks like a very hairy, tiny fridge bulldog.
Oh so good, Oh cut.
Oh that's a vampire bat.
I'd let him take a nibble. Okay, Now onto the sweet difficult question of picking a favorite species, a thing wondered about by patrons Crystal Mendoza, Ruby Austrich, Iras McPherson, Kathleen Sachs, and Jay, who asked, what's the best bat? And why is it the flying fox? Not so fast, Jay.
So many people asked if you have a.
Favorite species of bat?
Is that so hard to ask?
It's virtually impossible for me to pick a favorite. You know, it would tend to be the ones I worked with most recently. I used to thank my favorites for the larger carnivores. Then I found out that these tiny little bats smaller than a nickel are so intelligent thing to start training me. It's hard not to fall in love with them.
Rillin says that an unfortunate part of conservation means preserving some individual specimens to keep in collections for future ecologists, and he says it's in the name of learning as much as possible about each species to keep millions of them safe. Now, one thing that's a real threat to bats that we don't talk about often is wind turbines. Of you, Samantha Mitz and Derek Allen asked about how dangerous harnessing wind energy is, and Merlin has an article
on his website about all of this. But the long and short of it is that sadly, wind power kills tons of bats from collisions and from a drop in air pressure that affects their oxygen levels and their lungs and can kill them instantly. Now, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bats die just in the US each year, and the estimates are likely way lower than the reality since so many scavengers will just gobble up the dead bats before they're found and counted. So what can stop
all of these bats dying? Things that can stop it involved raising the wind speed threshold for when the turbine starts rotating, so waiting till it gets a little bit windier to have them start going around. That could save seventy seven percent of some species killed with only a one percent decline in energy output, or perhaps adding an annoying ultrasonic deterrent kind of a loud noise that they just hate, kind of like when bars play the Semisonic
hit closing time at intolerable volumes at one fifty five am. Now, Merlin says that until the wind folks and the bat folks figure it out, we can each try individually just to use less electricity, just turn out the lights for the bats.
The goal is to save as much of healthy nature on this planet as we can. It's not to quibble about every little thing that goes wrong.
Yeah, the bigger picture for sure. Okay, let's return to the topic of cuteness. A listener named Georgia wants to know is it true that they drink by licking water off their bellies.
Flying foxes do drink by kind of belly flopping into river water, and when they come up, there's a bunch of water clings to their fur and they drink that.
Oh, it's just like dunking your hair in the sink and then sucking on as you go back your day. Tons of you had the foresight to submit questions about bad eyes, such as Gracie and Gretchen and a few others ask if there's any truth to the same blind as a bat, and does batvision vary from species to species? What's the range of eyesight for bats?
It varies from species to species. But I don't know of any bath that doesn't probably see fairly well. Their baths that have very small eyes, and we wonder how well they see. But most baths that have been tested certainly see fine. Oh. In fact, some even see color. What's cool, though, is that using sound alone, bats can see everything we see, except perhaps in some cases color.
But they can also see things we can't see because by looking at this table, you do not know if that's foam rubber painted over, or if that's hard wood. The bat would know.
And how is that echolocation working? Is it similar to Wales? Some listeners wanted to know. Patrons Helena, Dave Woodriff, Curious, DNA, y'all wanted to hear about echolocation and sonar.
Yeah, it's been estimated by the Don Griffin, the guy who discovered bat echolocation. He estimated that it was on a what per what ouns for rounds basis billions of times more efficient than anything ever developed by humans.
Oh my gosh, have you heard of there are a few people who are not cited who are blind to use echolocation themselves to avoid obstacles.
Have you heard about that?
All bats have been modeled. They've been used as models for developing aids for the blind to navigate. In fact, the military is using bat models now to try to develop artificial bats that fly into anime territory despite on the.
Enemy, like little tiny baby drones.
Yeah, just the little ones.
Now, A few people wanted to know about citizen and community science programs, like Elizabeth Alien, Clara Simpson, and Janine Williams, who asked a bit too humbly, what is the best thing us plubs could do to support that conservation? Also, I had to look up plubs because I was like, is it pleaves or plubs? Apparently it's plubs. Now. One thing this podcast episode is doing is tossing some money
toward Merlin Tuttle dot org. Every week we donate to a foundation of the ologists choosing and this one was very easy. Merlin Tuttle has been working for fifty years to help in back conservation and Merlin Tuttle dot org is an amazing resource. So a donation for last week's episode and this week's episode will go to Merlin title dot org. And there are sponsors who make those donations possible, so you may be hearing a few words about them. Okay,
back to your questions about community science programs. I need Williams and some others wanted to know what's the best thing that community citizen scientists can do to support back conservation.
The first thing you do is help your neighbors and friends get over unfounded fears of bats. There's the mind to killer. The single most prevalent reason that I have seen worldwide for destroying large numbers of bats is fear. I've got pictures of piles of batbones in a cave in Mexico that where the owner had sealed it shut with hundreds of thousands inside. I have been at places where millions were burned in caves by just putting old car tires in the entrance and dwsed in the kerosene,
lining it on fire. I was told by colleagues that there's this beautiful bat cave in this place. I should go there. If I went to Kenya. I went there and it had all been bulldozed over, and the owner said, well, you know, I built house just a quarter mile away, and everybody told me that that if I didn't get rid of those bats, they would move from the cave into my house. Those bats would never cared a bit about his house. He had stayed right in the cave.
But people, you know, just in the last couple of years, it's even been on National Public Radio that bats are arguably among the most dangerous animals on our planet. In an NPR story that's probably still there and can be looked up, they report is almost a direct quote. When bats are flying overhead, beware that poop that falls on your shoulder may be ebola. And not long after that aired,
I was down at the Congress Avenue bridge. A gal saw me and realized that I probably knew something about bats, and she was very concerned. They're there with their husband and said, can you tell tell me, am I safe kind of bat poop on me here? And I knew she'd been listening to NPR radio and these wild stories linking bets to every kind of conceivable dangerous thing. It gets back in my opinion, well, It starts with the
fact that Raby's treatment is so lucrative. I mean, just look at the difference of treeing a dog and a human right, I mean talk about lucrative.
So Merlin has a blog post about it, and he says he usually loves NPR but was deeply, deeply disappointed by this. And of course, once again, do you have a job or pastime that involves encounters or permanent handling of wildlife? Not a bad idea to get a Raby's vaccine. We did cover Raby's stats, which are much lower than public perception in part one, but these patrons asked about Raby's and rabies vaccines.
Paul D.
Simmons, Margaret A. Backer, Reny, Emily Martinez, deb Nervous and Brandy Mandy Bender, mattz Clement, Kitlin O'Connell, Eric Mahanka, Sarah Greer, don A Wald, Alissa Wearing Crisper, and Lauren Eggert Crowe and I will repeat the disclaimer from part one. Doctor Merlin Tittle reminds us he and other bat researchers, like vets, they have received pre exposure vaccination against rabies that protects against defensive bites from animals that they might handle who
are unfamiliar. Now unprotected people bitten by any animal should seek advice regarding a possible need to be vaccinated or have the animal tested for rabies. But Catherine Stacey asked, can the bats get the vaccine? Is there a bait laced with raybies vaccine for bats like what's used for other wildlife such as foxes and raccoons. What's going on
with that? As someone asked about giving bat vaccines like they might do without other wildlife, like if vaccinating bats for rabies is even a thing that's worth looking into.
I was part of a discussion and actually have a paper I believe in press now in which that is discussed. I happen to be one of there are several authors. I'm one that says I don't think it's worth it.
Okay, This next sunny or perhaps not so sunny question was asked by Leanne Schuster, A zamb And Amelia Hines and a lot of well on that topic, A lot of listeners have the question if you see a bat during the day, is it a bad sign?
Not necessarily depends on where the bat is. If the bats hanging in a normal position, where that species lives. I mean, you know, I have plenty of times walked under a tree, and I know what kind of leaves. Bets that live under leaves like to hang on and I'll look up, Oh there's a bat. Well that BET's doing. He's perfectly normal. That's not a problem. Yeah. If the bat is out on the ground or out where a bird could easily catch it in the daytime, then that
bat is almost certainly sick. Now that doesn't mean he's rabid. Nine percent of such bats aren't rabid, but five percent are. Most of the statistics you hear about rabies and bats come from there. Taken from the Health Department only gets suspect bats submitted. If the bat's not acting abnormally, it doesn't get submitted. So this is like deciding what proportion of Americans have cancer based on checking cancer clinics.
Yeah, that works. Now, the next question was asked by a lot of you, and I mean approximately one million. So I will say your name's with my mouth very fast. This is a white hot topic.
It was right under our nosis.
Now, even though Merlin's a fun guy, I had to ask him this tiny pummer white nose syndrome asked about by Ruby Austrick, first time question asker, Jesse Spencer, Emily Jean, Alicia Giland Margaret Matera Bronwin, Trum McDonald, b and K Boys, Quentin McKenna, lurs and Jennifer Downey, Live Schaeffer, Samantha Bold, Pandora Two, Hannah M Childers, Acacia Sprague, Lauren Harder, Sarah Luchesi, Cassie Flint, Leah Wilbur and Ana Thompson, jcw Adam Weaver,
tanging At, Mandy Bender, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Roonda Grizzle, Madeline Rodgers, who says, where is white nose syndrome the worst and what species does it affect the most? And how bad is it? What can we do? What's going on with white nose? And now when it comes to white nose, what can be done to help them?
The most important thing that could be done now to help bats that have populations that have crashed because of white nose syndrome is to help protect and restore more roosting habitat, more habitat in general, but particularly roosting.
Habitat and now roosting habitat that's the overnight sleepy.
Time mostly where they hibernate.
Oh well, that was the next question. Do they eat in winter? Do they hibernate?
The bats that have been hardest hit by white nose indrome are bats that hibernate in caves all winter. There's very little food in a temperate zone from you know, you might get away with staying active in the winter here, but you go a little bit north of here and throughout most of the United States and Canada, there are no insects available to eat at night, so you have to either migrate south for the winter or hibernate in
a cave. And the biggest losses of all time have occurred when their hibernating caves were destroyed and are disturbed. And here's the problem. Years ago, I know evenly would say the cavers. What's the problem with saving less than one percent of caves for bats, leaves all the rest for you. Well, it's not quite that way. We humans want the same caves that the bats want, So we're competing for the one percent that have gigantic entrances, huge passages,
multiple you know, complexity. Those are the first ones that we humans want, and so many huge numbers of our us baths were lost before anybody even reported that they were present.
Is there anything that can be done to medicate them at all? Or to medicate yeah, can you give them anti fungal No?
No, okay, I'm absolutely adamant about that. I believe that more harm is being done than help in trying to find a cure for white no syndrome.
It's more just trying to recover the populations.
Since since this began, there have been cures found. I mean, I remember a rehaber that just mixed a dilute vinegar and water mixture and could cure white no syndrome. But when they banded all those baths and released them back in the while, they got in again and died. So curing because you find something that'll kill the fungus is not a cure that keeps you from getting reinfected. And even if you found something that would prevent reinfection, imagine
trying to treat all the bats or the locations. There
must be billions of locations infected with that fungus. Now, I mean, just Mammoth Cave alone, that used to house many millions of bats, has more than four hundred miles of passages imagine treating all those with something that's going to kill this fungus, and then understand that this fungus is only one of thousands of kinds of fungi, and if you found something that would kill it, you might cause a horrible problem chain reaction, destroying whole ecosystems that we don't even know much about.
Yeah, is the best course of action.
To let it run its course and make sure that they have enough places to re and just repopulate.
If you go to my website again and look under resources under white nose syndrome. I did a thorough investigation a few months ago of what has happened where it has passed over the last decade, and we're seeing clear signs of recovery. Genetically resistant bats are apparently recovering.
Okay, Okay, that's promising. That's the good news, and so it's wonderful that we have Merlin going to bat for these critters. I hate myself.
I did find evidence that it's very interesting. There are colonies that have fully recovered that drop by at least eighty percent when it passed that are now fully recovered. The ones I'm thinking about, many of them have been banded by researchers, and when they look for them, they never find the hibernation. This means that those survivors are doing so well, haven't had to put up with humans trying to save them. Let me point out that before
white nose syndrome was a problem. I mean, I founded the first two endangered species recovery teams for bats in America, and we were adamant that nobody would go in disturb bats during hibernation more than once every two years, even to census for the government to tell how they're doing and retrospect. Now I think we should have made that every three to five years, because I have again on my website published resources about the cost of hibernation disturbance.
When you go into a cave and force about to wake up out of hibernation in the wintertime, he burns up on average thirty to sixty days worth of stored fat reserve. This fungus is killing bats because that makes them. You know, like if you've ever had chiggers or poison ivy, you don't sleep well at night, you wake up scratching. Well, that's what's happened to the baths. They're waking up out of hibernation. It's very costly, and that's why they're coming
out before spring. They're desperate, they're starving, and that's why they're dying. Well, imagine, once white nose syndrome came along, there were some places where researchers are going in there half a dozen times or more winter and sometimes spending hours.
Oh wow, and they're even more tired.
That would have been enough to knock the population that cave out without any fungal problem.
So let those snoozy, little floppy faced fuzz puppets sleep people, get out of their beautiful vulvenoses, let them catch some sease.
Evolution is going to play its course.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And I don't know of any evidence yet that any species is going to go extinct because of this, all the ones I know of where it's passed by far enough we'll go to have an idea seem to be hanging on. I won't call it thriving, but hanging on and showing signs now of recovery.
So if you're worried about about the bats, don't lose all your sleep over just white nose.
White nose is only affecting right now less than a dozen species out of forty some species in the US. They don't all have to hibernate in caves. Some species are actually probably benefiting because they don't have to compete with the ones that are dying from white nose syndrome. And I'm not going to say that's beneficial overall. The good side may be that we have suddenly become much more aware of bats and how harmful it could be to lose them, and more people have learned about bats
and care because of white nose syndrome. But I do believe all the colonies that have been best monitored that I know of are starting to recover. That's good and I'm very optimistic. One thing that I'm very concerned about is working with sport cavers, who often discover old roosting sites and caves that nobody else knows about. During this time, government agencies have blanket told the cavers oftentimes they just couldn't go caving, and I actually made enemies out of
former allies. And we need those cavers out there telling us where our places are that we need to protect, and often they're very happy to do it for us if we just cooperate with them Instead of just saying you can't go caving.
Anymore, yeah, is to try to get them invested in it as well. Merlin Tuttle, National treasure Skilled Diplomat. Now on Merlin Tuttle dot org you can find a few fifteen minute video titled the Power of Winning Friends and not Battles Merlin Tuttle's conservation philosophy.
I love him. Have I mentioned he's an American hero?
Okay? So it's dark and mysterious in caves, and how do cavers tell if there have been past bat parties?
They stained the limestone, and you can tell by the contours and the stain on the limestone. You can actually estimate roughly how many bats lived there in the past. And there are plenty of those places where bats could be restored, even millions. And I personally have seen at least at least multi millions restored where there were none. Oh wow, not multimillions in one cave, but like in one Tennessee cave it was down to sixty five gray
bats and now it's up to a quarter million. There are many encouraging instances where we can see that we are re estate bablishing hundreds of thousands of baths. It's not all about millions dying. There are things that we can do to restore habitat. We can put up bathouses in our backyards, and we should be very concerned about caves that can be restored. Years ago, when everybody was scared death of rabies, commercial cave owners and they don't
like call themselves commercial cave owners. They used to not want any baths in their caves because people are so frightened and freaked out by them. But we have a cave right here in North Austin now. It's a commercialized tour cave and it's got quite a few hibernating baths in it that have learned to ignore people because it's very well protected and nobody ever harms them. And people walk right by within two meters of those baths and
the bats don't even pay any attention. And you know, the bats are very good at adapting to us, if we'll only adapt to get along with them. Right And despite all this stuff about how bats are supposed to be such dangerous disease carriers, let me point out that they have one of the world's finest track records. I don't know if any animal has a finer track record than bats at living in close association with people without causing human sickness.
Right, And it's so cool to think that they might be all around us and we just don't get a chance to necessarily see them. And Ryan and Jasmine want to know what material is closest to that of bat wings, like how can you make a batsuit?
I have seen comparisons in terms of strength where I think there's actually a medical doctor that wrote this said that the average bat wing was nineteen times sturdier than a surgeon's glove. Oh my gosh, that's the best statistic I can come up with on wings.
So I looked into it and there's skin that stretches like a living drum between those gorgeous, freakishly long fashioned model fingers. That's called a potassium or petasia plural, and it's two thin layers of skin with a last in between it. Also Listener no Fundacal says she got slapped once in the face by one and it felt leathery. And I don't know why she calls herself no fundical because that's a top notch story. Boy howdy, she's fine.
So moving on to things that are not excellent. What is something about bats or about your job that you really don't like? What sucks about being a chiropterologist?
Yeah, I don't like.
Yeah, what's the.
Worst part about your job? The thing that you're like, oh, this, the.
Worst part is just I have founded more than one conservation organization and spent most of my life. You vowed to that, And the worst part for me is day to day wanting to be sure that I find the financial resources to keep those good people that follow me and want to help it's financially healthy and their families. Okay, it isn't easy even now to raise money for bats. People and organizations will line up and compete with each other to protect cute things like pandas. And the crazy
thing is there's nothing uncute about bats. It's just the belief. Here's another one of our craziest about humans. You know, we perceive anything. The bigger the eyes, the more beautiful. You don't want a very big nose, you don't want to be very heavy set.
Okay, okay, quick aside. For more dirt on incredibly screwed up beauty standards, listen to the two part Coology episode with psychologist doctor Bene we did not discuss pandas in it, but it is otherwise very juicy and life changing.
What animal by those tokens should we dislike the most? The panda, elephants.
The elephants, okay, I was saying, the panta is.
A little Everybody loves elephants. And you want to know another interesting statistic, more humans are killed annually in the United States by elephants than by.
Bats by the bye. I looked up most deadly animals to humans, and the top two are mosquitoes and humans. Bats are like, don't look at me, man, I'm eating the mosquitoes that are killing you. And I've never been caught up in a life insurance scandal that's on y'all.
That just shows how rare it is for anybody killed by bat.
I think what you will do for bats is what people did for whales in the seventies and elephants. I think that I think that your work alone may bring bats into human consciousness where they are not just to in October decal or decoration.
You know, well, you know that's that's one of my primary purposes and being a photographer until I learned to take pictures of bats as they really are. You could almost never see a picture of bat that wasn't snarling in self defense. You take a little bat whose head is no bigger than my thumb, provoke him. He thinks you're about to eat him. You take a picture, blow it up to page size. Looks like a saber tooth tiger on the attack. Who in the world wouldn't be afraid of this critter?
And what kind of speeds do you have to use?
What kind of camera?
What kind of speeds and lenses do you have to use to get these gorgeous pictures?
You don't have to take everything that fast, But now I take almost all my pictures at least if they're flash pictures, they're taking it about a forty thousands of a second.
Well, they're gorgeous.
Well, the pictures have been a major, major part of the public turnaround when it comes to bats. Seeing is believing, hearing is not quite there.
And now the best part of your job, your favorite thing about bats? Your favorite thing about your job.
Anybody that associates with me would tell you loud and clear that I am a bat photography addict. I love getting great pictures that nobody else has thought of getting, And I will sit out for seemingly endlessly waiting for something to happen, and usually it's for the purpose of
promoting conservation. Everybody knows. I'll spend ten times more time trying to get a good shot of a bat catching a insect that costs billions of dollars in crop losses as an insect that's just pretty or ugly or something. But people ask me what I do in my leisure time. I study beats and photographed baths for vacation time. I've had a lifelong vacation.
That is the best.
And one of my favorite things is developing, perfecting my ability to change attitudes for the better for the environment, and that over time takes a lot of skill. Yeah, you learn to ask questions rather than debating people who've done things you disagree with.
I think you would have been a great politician, but I'm glad that you helped the bats instead.
Probably more productive. I didn't really say that.
This has been just years in the making and quite possibly my favorite conversation I've ever had. Thank you so much for letting me come to your place, your roost here.
Well, you're very welcome, and just know that we didn't even cover a tenth of what should have been talked about about bats. So if you get a big encore, come on back. You'll be welcome.
You do.
You a great job.
Thank you, doctor Tuttle. That's amazing. So there you have it. Shamelessly ask the sharpest minds the dopiest questions because that is how they learned, and people who love things want to share those things. Now. Of course, follow Merlin Tuttle on all social platforms. He and his social media right hand Teresa and Nikta, are both amazing. He is on Twitter at Merlin's Bats, Instagram at Merlin Tuttle Photo, on Facebook at Merlin Title Bat Conservation, and of course Merlin
tittle dot org has all those links. That website is an incredible resource for photos of bats and articles and blog posts for Merlin and future trips in the field with him, so check that out. The worst thing about his work, and he has drank out of cave puddles, is making sure it's all funded, so of course a second donation went to his organization for this episode. To support you can go to Merlin title dot org. Now. Links for this episode are up at aliwar dot com.
Slash ologies slash Chiropterrology, and there are links in the show notes that are also shirts and hats and tots and Ologies merch available at aliwar dot com. Thank you Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for managing that, and also check out their comedy podcast You Are That I spilled maguts on their October twenty eighth Halloween episode, so get all up in that. Thank you to admins of the Ologies podcast Facebook group, Aaron Talbert and Hinnalippo. Thank you
to all the Ologies transcribers helmed by Emily White. Transcripts and bleeped episodes are at aliwar dot com slash Ologies Dash Extras. There's a link in the show notes. Happy birthday to gismologist Simon Yetch, just one of my favorite people.
Thanks for existing. Thank you to assistant editor Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast My Good, Bad Brain and the mustachioed bat, which I believe is a species of bet Stephen Ray Morris of the per Cast Cat Pod and the Dino Pod Sea Jurassic Right, who edits all these pieces together each week And if you listen all the way to the end, you know I tell you a secret each week and this week. The secret is that I'm recording these asides from a hotel room in Austin.
I'm here shooting for CBS, and I'm pretty sad because I don't think I'm gonna get to see Marlin again while i'm here, but hopefully I'll be back in Austin soon. Austin, You're a great town. What's up with that? Why are you so good? This? Pretty?
People are nice?
Food is good.
It's got a bunch of antique malls.
Also, one more secret. I had fu today and it was very onion heavy and I feel like my hands still smell like onions, and I can't figure that out because I didn't eat the soup with my hands and I've washed my hands several times. So I'm just alone smelling like onions and a Hampton in in Texas, Google and bat Dicks. This is the life I chose and.
I love it.
Okay, next week, I'm not going to tell you what the episode is, but I'm very stoked about it. Okay, Okay. Pacodermatology, hobbiology or doo zoology. Lithology is technology, meteorology, metterntology, ethnology, and seriology. Selenology.
Look it it's freaking facts.