How Bats Work

Remember the little uh like real runners. They still wear those shorts or maybe it's all spandex now like super tight, but they used to be just like a little whispy piece of but they were called dolphins. Well, I think that was the brand. I wasn't familiar remember, but you know, things were you know, the right gust of wind could reveal lots of things. I know you're talking about, like

short shorts, real flimsy one real satiny, flimsy, whispy. But and I think I think they were dolphin running shorts. And by the way, this this podcast is not sponsored by Dolphin running shorts. It's sponsored by the Bats of America. That's right, which I always have liked bats. But after reading this, I'm so much more in love with bats. Oh yeah, they're need animals. It's amazing and not just like I learned a lot of stuff. I kind of

knew about the echo location and stuff like that. Yeah. Actually, here's here's my impression of a bat echo locating. Good huh, because humans can't hear it. That's right, I just did it. Really great, very nice, chuck. If you are on the fence, well not you, because you just stated that you're over the fence clearly in the bat yard. Pro bat, pro bat me too. Um. They never did anything to anybody on purpose, from some of them sucking your blood while

you sleep. Aside from that super rare um, bats seem to be pretty great animals. And if you're on the fence about bats and you want to go over to the pro bat side, go on to YouTube and type in bat eating a banana. It's very cute. It's adorable. There's also baby bat burrito videos. They're wrapped up in a blanket out of tortilla. There's a lot of cute bat videos out there because there's a lot of cute

bats there. Um. And you might say, no, no, no no, I've seen bats they are as ugly as pure evil gets. You're talking about what are called micro bats, the ones with the crazy nostrils that actually make un gag. Oh yeah, I think they're cute too. I mean I get it because they definitely look like uh, literary ghouls and fiends. But um, which makes you wonder. I wonder if fiends and ghouls were modeled after those types of bats. Oh I'm sure, Okay, I didn't realize it was so obvious.

Well no, I mean it would have to, because that's a real thing, and they look so much alike. Maybe no one had seemed a bat and then they make gargos are like, what a coincidence? Or maybe a bat just died at the feet of an artist one day and he's like, oh man, I gotta cast this in clay and put it on my front doorstep. I know what you were driving at. Though. They are cute in their own really weird uncanny way. Yeah so, but but nothing like the flying fox. Those are legit cute. No,

and actually this article needs to be updated. Man, So bats are there's actually bats are the only flying mammals. We should say, they're very unique animals. Only flying mammals wait, what about the penguin non flying and a bird. It didn't even come close. Bats are mammals um and they're more closely related to humans than say, like the fox or the rat or whatever that they're they're frequently described

as being the flying version of um. And there's I think something like species of bats species, and they all belong to the order um Chiroptera, which means hand wing, which we'll get to. And then bats typically are subdivided into two sub orders, and it used to be mega chi rop Tera and micro Chiropa. No, because science specifically like taxonomy, used to be kind of dumb. It was

just based on appearance. And then once the field of genetics came along, they started like genetically testing things and realizing that it's not a really good way to categorize things like this skunk looks like a raccoon, but they're not the same thing, right, so maybe they shouldn't be in the same order any longer. This is the case with bats, so um it used to be based on their size megabats and microbats or megachira chirop Tera and

micro chirop Tara. Now, because of genetic testing, some of the very small bats are now in the megabat order, so order and vice versa, but those are still sub orders they are, but they renamed him to megabats and micro bats. But so, for example, the long tongue fruit bat is considered a megabat, but it's wingspan is only

about ten inches. It's a little thing. Whereas if you look at the flying fox or the fruit bat uh Asia, Africa and Australia, those things are adorable and they are huge, like six ft wingspans on some of these bad boys. And I mean, I think they're gorgeous. I know. I think it's the wing just terrifies people. Yeah, because it looks like a cute, little fuzzy fox and then he goes right, it envelops you and takes you to Well, that's what evokes I think is uh is a cape

that something would wrap around you and suck your blood? Yeah, like a vampire. Oh I wonder if vampires were invented independently a bat? Uh? Uh? The what is the cute little guy that beat? Yeah? I posted a picture that fella on Facebook today, Um, just as a teaser. People didn't know we're gonna do an episode on it, just to get reactions. And most people are like, oh, that's super cute, and a lot of people are like, I still wouldn't touch that thing. Well, that's a really good,

sensible thing. Like bats might be cute and all that, but they're also enormous reservoirs for diseases. They're like top notch disease reservoirs for diseases that you and I can catch, like ebola in rabies. And they think one of the reasons is because they and we'll talk about this later, but they're they're so comfortable with each other, they just

huddle together, spreading disease on one another exactly. I mean, like epidemic disease didn't take hold among humans until we moved into cities, and even in cities, like, we're still not elbow to elbow figuratively we are, but not in reality. Bats are literally elbow to elbow in their colonies, so disease spreads anywhere it wants among them. Yeah, however, about the raby scare. They are carriers of rabies, but not

to like people think. I think less than one half of one percent of bats are rabid, one half point five and you're more way more likely to get rabies from raccoons and skunks and okay, well there you go. That that puts it in perspective because I like any raccoon. I see, maybe I should stop doing that. You should probably start do it. They bite me a lot, Yeah, she checked out, Maybe I should. Uh so, yes, you said,

how many species about? And aside from varying in size, like you said that, just a look of them, like the flying fox looks, like we said, like a little fox has that long snout, looks traditionally like a mammal has smaller ears, and those little scary looking guys have those huge ears, and that knows, that makes you meek gag. So here's the thing, like, I believe that even that is up in the air now that they've started doing genetic testing. What is like that classification based on looks

as well? It's it's just bat taxonomy is really up for grabs right now. It's time. Let's say, generally speaking, then the one of the other distinctions too, typically that divides these two um suborders chuck is what they eat? Yeah, um, the micro bats tend to be carnivorous, so it includes vampire bats, but vampire bats are not not all bats are vampire bats, even if they're carnivorous. Most bats just

the insects if they're carnivorous, like mosquitoes. But megabats, including those the big ones with the six foot wingspan, the flying fox I think you said, um, those are they're just hippies. They just eat plants, that's it, like literally nectar and spread pollen. Yeah, it's pretty great like birds. Why is that funny? It's pretty great. Yeah, it is. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about the wing because this is where my learning really started here

in researching this. The German word for bats is uh fida moves. I expected more from you than that, yeah, really, yeah, I expected you to put on like a metal hat with like a spike coming out of the top that translates into flying mice. Yes for the curious. And people will say that because a bat does look kind of like a flying mouse or flying rodent of some sort. But like I said, they're much more closely related to humans. Yeah. And you also might think they're like birds because they

fly around. Not so when you look at the wing structure of a bat and a bird, uh, very different. It actually if you look at a human, if you held your arms out to your side with your elbows bent and your fingers spread, and then basically shook your hands. Yeah, like you're gonna do jazz hands exactly. And then imagine that there was a webbed membrane called a how would you pronounce it, pettigym PETA giant peta giant. I don't have one of those two those are the wings. The flesh. Yeah,

there you go, the flesh of the wing. If you held your hands out into jazz hands, but it was all webbed and connected. That is way more what a bat's wing it looks like in functions like than a bird's wing. Right. So a bird's wing has rigid bones in it, right, and the muscles that control the wings are located basically at what would amount to your armpits. Like so like, just do the chicken nance real quick and think about what you're doing. Yes, right, you're you're

you're not. There's not really any movement in the actual arm. It's all at the shoulder joint. Ye. Same with birds. With bats, that is not the case because their base sically like winged hands, which is the reason they're their

order is named that right. Yes, um, they can basically swim through the air, which allows them to dive, bomb and turn and twist and go up and down and go after These insects that can fly really fast, which constitute most of their prey um much more easily, and they're much more depth at um maneuvering midair than your average bird is. Yes, absolutely, like a thousand times. There's

no science behind that. I would say even like times. Okay, well, I mean if there's if we're going without scienceless to say like a million times more a gazillion. Uh. They have little thumbs that extend out of the wing as a in the form of a little small claw, and this is what they use to climb trees. Um, it's really neat how they fly. I guess we'll go ahead and let the cat out of the bag. They don't have enough lift with their wings to take off like

sitting on a branch like a bird. They don't have like strong enough legs to run run, run, run, run down a runway and take off, so they hang upside down and drop and then start flying. They have like small, withered little legs that they basically dragged behind them as they crawl. Yeah, and so that's why they climb trees. They climb up to a high launch point and we'll get to the hanging later because that's super cool too,

and then just fall and start flying. That's how bads fly. Uh. Scientifically speaking, they believe that bat's um used to not fly, and thanks to natural selection, the ones who could leap further and further from tree to tree, uh were more successful, and that eventually led to um that patagium being formed. Yeah, they know they could fly, kind of like lemurs are

flying squirrels or something like that. Right, So, like one of them was born with an extra skim flap and everyone's like, you freak, and then it flew and they were like, wow, the exactly look at all these insects I got um. So they think that the bat evolved, like you said, from a tree dwelling mammal, which we likely did as well, which is why we're related to bats.

Most likely we share some sort of single common ancestor that dwelt in trees um and probably bats evolved somewhere around a hundred million years ago, is what they believe. But I think the oldest fossils they found are like fifty million in change, and these fossils that they found in wyoming um show that the wings are there, but the ears are not developed, which suggests that flying developed among bats before echolocation did, which has been a longstanding debate.

Did they did echo like location come first, did flying come first, or did they both evolve at the same time? And it turns out flying was first? Well, right for this break, we will talk about that echo location. How about that. Let's all right, Josh. We talked about the wing structure makes them uh able to hunt really well, but it's really a one two punch um along with their echolocation or echo loctive abilities. I think that's the word.

Is that a word? Yeah? Right? So, Um, you can maneuver all day long, but if you can't find your prey, usually doing a weird dance exactly, and you're just showing off um and the way that bats find their prey. There's a common myth, chuck that bat blind is a bat that bats can't see absolutely untrue. Most bats have

like perfectly good vision, like like exceptional vision. Even Yeah, Um, there was a study, it's some German study I believe that found that um bats have rods and cones, which means they can see color in the daylight as well as um like black and white stuff right old movies, um before Ted Turner got his hands on him, and that never went anywhere. It really didn't. But now it's like there, it's done. Now the Wizard of Oz is like gaudy, as gaudy as like the terra Cotta Army.

Originally the Wizard of Oz always was both because when they get to Oz, it's color Oh yeah, you're right, Yeah, well what oh gone with the wind? I think he did colorize he did colorize it. Anyway, can you tell it's been a little lot since we've done this. I think it's great. I can. It's also really hot in here, and it's getting hotter by the second. The more I stall, the hotter it gets. Allow me to continue. So bats echolocate as well as c and again I'm not quite sure.

I couldn't find this chuck, but I think micro bats might be the only type to echolocate. I don't think all bats to. The reason why is because if you're hippie pollen eating um herbivore bat, you don't need to echolocate your food. You can just fly around until you run into a flower. Yeah, yeah, and smash it and then just like lean over and suck it. There's some nectar. Okay. If you are seeking flying insects as your prey, then yeah,

you better be able to echolocate. And we can actually echolocate. There's a man who um is sightless? Who who can echo locate and he's a human being is Yeah, I can't remember what. Maybe a Men's Health article on him like this dude just taught himself to echo locate. Did they call him batman? Probably? I don't remember that much. Well, if you've ever been to um Canyon, let's say a Grand canyon, let's say the Grand Canyon Um, and you boom your your voice out there, please don't say hello,

or is anyone out there? Those are? You know? Come up with something better than that, better than Pink Floyd lyrics. No, if it's in that context, then it passes. What would you recommend for an echo man? What's your go to echo words? Um? Definitely not echo. I think echo is great, it's hilarious. Definitely not Hello, you know, I would say I would say, now batting for the New York Yankees, Manny Moto, Mandy Moto, That's what I would do, but you could also do cock do the chicken dance. Oh yeah,

that'd be good. So whenever you choose to go with that's your next visit to the canyons um. You will hear that echo come back to you. And it's basically the same way that bats use, except instead of echoing off of a canyon wall, it's echo off of a

mosquito or whatever. Yeah, when you make sound waves and it travels and it hits that canyon, all it comes back to you, right, And bets do the same thing, but like you said, they're bouncing off of a mosquito or um some other flighted bug that it eats, and just from standard echolocation, the bat can identify, oh, there's a mosquito there, like all this other stuff, all the all the other sound that I just put out there came back at a much slower rate than this little

spot did, and that spot is probably a mosquito. But it gets way more detailed than that. Basically, bat's echolocation um is picked up and they're still not entirely certain,

like what kind of receptors the bat has. I mean, it's apparently all oral, but in the bat's brain it creates what would be about equivalent to our visual field, Like we see light bouncing off of stuff, and I can tell roughly how far a way you are and where you are, and what position you're facing or what direction you're going, all through light waves in an instant like we don't have to think about that, see it,

and it's there. That's not calculating all of this, it's just getting this Information's brain is automatically putting it together. And what it amounts again to like a video of a visible video spatial field. Right, and so it knows there's mosquito. It's about this big. It's about yea big. It's traveling at this rate in this direction, and it's

like right below me. And it goes and gets the mosquito all from rather than picking up light waves, creating a sound wave and listening for uh, it's echo, that's echolocation. It's amazing. So and also I should say, chuck, it's really good that this is ultrasonic um because that some of them go up to like a hundred and twenty decibels, which is the equivalent of having a smoke detector like a couple inches from your ear. No, it shatter you

your life, all right, So let's talk about the different parts. Um. They will determine the distance of the mosquito by how long it takes that noise to return. Uh. You and I could do that with simple math. Uh. At a canyon, we could actually calculate how far away that other wall is with maths you know, uh location, They can determine where it is and how big it is and what direction is moving by literally like if the mosquito sound bounces back and hits the right ear before the left ear,

you know it's going to be the right That's pretty easy. Um. And then they have all these little complex folds within the ear. It's not just like a big, dumb human ear like we have, UM, lots of little folds that will help indicate its vertical position as well. So if they know it's coming from above, it'll sound different in the ear than if it's below. And again to the bat,

all this is happening automatically. Its brain is putting all this information together, and the bat knows there's a mosquito right below. It's right. The size is determined by the intensity of the echo. Something uh larger will have a you know, more intense echo. So that's a big fat mosquito that just feasted on Josh. So it's got lots of delicious of blood, delicious blood and um. They also used the Doppler effect, Chuck, to determine whether something is

going away from it or toward it. That's right. Remember the Doppler effect. I've mentioned it before and got it totally wrong. Let me try again. It's tough, You're ready. So the wavelength of something is is set, it's determined, right, But if something is coming near you, that wavelength has to be compressed in a shorter space. So therefore the

frequency the pitch increases. If something traveling away from you, it has a lot more space between it and you to fill up that same way length that same that same yeah, the same wavelength, so the frequency the pitch goes lower. That's the Doppler effect, right. I think it's the Doppler Why do I have feeling you're gonna get email? The people like, oh, Josh so close? Really practic, but this one more thing. Um. So that is how they

determine distance, location, size, direction and direction. Amazing, and also the actual sound that they're making when they echo. Locate a lot of bats fly around with their mouths open, and they look like they're just kind of slack jawed yokels. Well, it turns out there making their echolocation squeaks the whole time. Again, it's just ultrasonic, which is above the human threshold of hearing, right, So it's squeaking the whole time. It's not just sitting

there with its mouth a gate. And some bats also, um, especially the microbats that have the crazy nostrils that make umi gag um, those actually will echolocate and generate the sound through their nose. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's why they look that way. Mh. They're like little speakers. So, Chuck, I think we nailed like a location, don't you, and the Doppler effect. Maybe put that one to bed um and we will talk more about bats, including their little

families that they stay in right after this, Chuck. So you talked a little bit about bats and how they love to huddle together, and it depends on the kind of bat, the bloodthirsty bats, vampire bats. They actually tend to roost in small little colonies or solitary lee. I believe sometimes in like really hard to reach places like the Lost Boys. Yeah, yeah, like your fireplace. Yeah. I had to battle a bat once in a fireplace. Yeah, yeah, smoke it out. Uh No, I I didn't smoke it out.

I put on a leather coat over another coat, gloves, suit up before you do any like battle with nature, laundry baskett in a broom and I lost. But um, they they they'll be by themselves usually. That's a good giveaway that you have encountered a blood sucking bat. The hippie herbivore bats, those tend to congregate and enormous colonies,

some often composed of millions of bats. Millions. Yeah, pretty amazing. Yeah, um they we Well, you mentioned that they do all this feeding and activity dawn, dusk and overnight because they will um get eaten by hawks and falcons and things during the day uh and other predators too, So they like to stay away during the day and um and hide out like you said, the caves, dark places, under bridges. We'll talk about austin in a bit, right. Hawks don't

typically go into caves, they hang out in trees. So bats go off and spend their days sleeping in caves upside down upside down. And you were saying earlier that you were excited about talking about that, and I understand why. Yeah. I mean, like I said earlier, the reason they hang upside down is not to look creepy. Uh, it's because that's the way that they launched themselves to fly right, and when they're sleeping upside down, they're able to sleep.

You would think that, well, yeah, if you're like hanging onto something upside down, get tired. Yeah, you've got to really tense your muscles. Not with the bat you would if you were doing that. This is the fact of the show for me. I think you should take it. Well. You're right. If I was hanging upside down, I would not last very long because second A, I would be clinched. Well, we couldn't even hang upside down because we'd be using our hands and all the blood would rush to your

head too, and you just pass out. It would be really uncomfortable, That's right. But what would happen if we were to try to do that, or like to try to do a pull up, let's say, is we would you know, clench our fists around something which contracts muscles, which h or attached to your fingers by tendons. It's all one big uh, connection, series of connections. Right to hang onto something, to class something, or to grab that coffee cup, exactly, And you're exerting energy by by contracting

your muscle, right, that's right. With a bat, that's not the case at all. No, their tendons are only connected to the upper body. No muscle involve whatsoever. Right, So when they're hanging upside down, their upper body is pulling down on their tendons, which means their claws clothes, Yeah, under whatever they're hanging from. Yeah, it's like it's it's gravity coupled with just a reaction, like a literally a physical reaction from pulling that bat will make those claws

close exactly. So it requires no energy whatsoever, right or talents, I guess we should say, right, And but it requires no energy none whatsoever. And bats will actually like they'll die in that position sometimes. Yeah. So what they do is they'll fly up to this thing. They will initially clasp it with their claws and then relax, and when they relax, they hang, which makes them clamp down really hard.

And like you said, when they if they die hanging there, they will stay hanging there and they can go to sleep. That's where they sleep so um. One of the reasons why it's so important that a bat doesn't have to expend any energy while it's upside down is because they're mammals, which means that they are warm blooded, which means that they regulate their own temperature internally, right, which requires a

lot of energy. UM. That puts bats at a particular disadvantage because they fly, and it requires a ton of energy. Mammals are not designed to fly. To generate the the energy needed to fly, bats can do it, but to do it they have to enter what's called the state

of torpor every day. And basically, while they're hanging upside down, they get super super sleepy, and they get um so sleepy that their metabolism starts to slow and their internal their internal temperature falls and becomes about an equilibrium with the external temperature. So they go from um warm blooded to essentially cold blooded during a single day, like David Blaine might yes if he was preparing for like some weird stunt. They're controlling their own internal temperature and their

own metabolic rate, right. So while they're doing this, when their metabolism slows, they're using up less energy, which means that they're conserving it for when they fly later on when they go hunt, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. They can actually even hibernate some bats, yes, if they're in a region where it calls for it, or they may just do like birds and migrate to warmer climbs. There's a lot of different bats and a lot of different things that bats too. Is that going to be our

little tag this episode? Uh, all right, well let's talk a little bat. Um. It's called this fact and fiction since that's what this section is called in the article. Pretty original. Um, Like we said, their leathery wings and their weird faces and their resemblance to ghouls and demons make them vilified. But bats are our friends because they eat tons and tons of insects literally tons. Yeah. What was the stat on that there's um, twelve mosquitoes in an hour one bat. That's a little brown bat in

North America. It's the most common North American bat species mosquitoes in an hour, Which you say, who cares, there's trillions and trillions of mosquitoes. Well, there are a lot of bats, that's right. Um, there's a bat cave and and brock In cave or brack In cave, Texas that has twenty million bats. It's a colony and every night they eat two hundred tons of insects two hundred tons, and a lot of those insects are um crop ruining insects. So farmers frequently take their hats off and wave to

the bats. Hello, Hello, and something of a salute um when the bats fly by. Yeah. Have you ever seen a farmer do that to a bat? It's really pumping round up in one hand and waving at the bats in the other. You'll bring a little two d your eye. Uh. They are plant pollinators, like we said, they will go in and um gather nectar. And when they do this, they get pollen on their bodies. When they fly away,

they spread that pollen. So specifically, um, they're pollinators of bananas, figs, mangoes, cashews, and a guy. They So if you are hammered on tequila right now, thank a bat, thank a bad And you mentioned that um colony in Texas. In Austin, right, yeah, under the Congress Avenue Bridge, very famous spot two. In fact, it's a big tourist attraction. Now they've embraced so they're bringing tourist dollars into they pollinate, they eat pest bugs, and they bring in the tourists. I think some of

them are uber drivers as well. They're just trying to eat out a living yep, exactly. Uh what else, Let's talk about the guano you know. That is it's poop, that's bat poop, and guano is very rich in nitrogen and is a great fertilizer. And uh, not only that, but at one point the U. S Army and even further back, the UH Southern Army, the Confederate Army, I believe they're called used they collected back guano to use his gunpowder and explosives thanks check to the salt peter

from it. And I had no idea. Yeah, it actually extended the Civil War because once all their their fortifications were destroyed, they literally went and collected guano from bat caves to keep making bombs. Around about bombs, but gunpowder. And again it is also like a top notch fertilizer that's still in use today. Like you can buy back guano at the average nursery. Probably um and not it wasn't back guano, but burg guano too has been used and wars have been fought over it. It's such an

effective fertilizer and power energy source. Um. That Yeah, it's pretty interesting, so go read um. I can't remember talks about this. Um. On the on the scarier side, though, you did mention vampire bats and they do feed on blood. Um, but this article is keen to point out that they are not bloodthirsty man hunters. Uh, they will know they're man stalkers. The lead a cow. They when I say

eat a cow, they won't eat a cow. No, they You cow didn't even you know, it didn't hurt the cow that much, right, No, unless the cow contracts an

infection or something from it. Yeah. The vampire bats usually need about one to two tablespoons of blood and night, which you can easily get from a cow without any harm to the cow as far as blood loss goes, right, and the cow typically doesn't even know what's going on because the vampire bats have very sharp teeth that um, don't really make much of a sensation going in, and the saliva has an anticoagulant in it, so the blood just kind of trickles out and keeps coming and then

the vampire bat flies away. Um. Well, what's interesting about them, though, is they don't fly onto you, They fly near you, and then they stalk you on all fours, which makes it super creepy, even though I love that. A crawling bat with those wings is a little creepy coming to suck your blood. Yeah, yeah, or no, it's not sucking blood. Remember, it's an anti coagulant, so it just opens lapping up blood. Apparently. They also have a cool little um organ in their nose.

It's like a heat sensing organ, so they can find like where the blood is closest to the skin and then go. Uh, let's talk about reproduction for a second. Um. They reproduce typically only once a year of battery production. Yeah, oh you thought of it, just like us. I thought you're about to seeing salt and pepper. Um. They reproduce typically only once a year, and that makes them it's tough. They're some of the least producing mammals in the world. Yeah,

they produced one baby a year on average. Something can reproduce more, but not that doesn't happen that much. They're called pups, which is very cute. Pup the mother's body weight, which is remarkable because they often nurse while the mothers flying around. Yeah, so that would be like a hundred and twenty pound woman having a thirty pound baby just attached to her while she's flying exactly. Uh. They live, like we said, in large colonies and um so it's

not hard to find a mate. But once the females get pregnant, they tend to form a maternal colony, a maternity colony within the colony. That's pretty neat. Yeah, and apparently the bats are very altruistic, like they've recorded um acts of bats going and bringing food back for bats who are sick in in the colony. Yeah, that's pretty neat. That's pretty You don't find that very often in nature, No,

not even with man right in many cases. Yeah, uh so they'll form that little maternity colony, which is super sweet because the men don't really stick around and help raise the young. Evidently they just do their thing and they're gone. Um and apparently the colonies are men tend to hang out with men, and women tend to hang out with women. Anyway, it's like an eighth grade dancing there. Absolutely. Uh So what happens is that the women care for their offspring for a while, but they don't have a

whole lot of time to do it. Um. About six weeks to four months, and then the bat is fully independent and can fly on its own, which is great. And uh, this is the second fact of the podcast to me. The female bat is so smart. They can delay they're uh, they can delay their fertilization based on like the best time to have a baby bat. Yeah, so they can have the sex in the fall and hold that sperm, uh, and release the sperm to meet the eggs like six months later in the spring. Isn't

that amazing? They've learned to actually control their own cycle, have some serious world power. Well, they want to survive, you know, they are ultimate survivors. You know, bats have um a real problem facing them right now, chuck with white nose fungus. I know. And this is sort of uh, well it's not only a threat, but it's a bit

of a mystery, isn't it. Like why it's so widespread all of a sudden, Well, it's just spreading like wildfire, in part because back colonies are so huddled and close together.

From what I understand, it's just the ones that hibernate that are having the problem because this white nose fungus it is like a it's a fungus that grows on their nose, and apparently the itch makes the bats that are hibernating wake up, and when they wake up, they're in big trouble because an animal that hibernates has just enough energy store to make it through the hibernation period.

If they wake up and blow a bunch of energy, like bringing their metabolism and body heat back up to normal levels, and then try to go back into hibernation, they'll starve to death before the winner's over. So this white fungus grows on their noses and other parts, but typically on the nose and wakes them up, and then they spend all their energy and end up dying or they die from exposure to these winter temperatures of that

kind of thing. Yeah, and apparently it is really deadly, like some hybernaculus, which is like a hibernating colony, have like ninety to a hundred percent mortality rate when white white nose fungus gets ahold of them. Holy cow. Yeah, and it's a real problem. They don't know how to stop it. Well. Another real problem is in places, uh some parts of South America when there's a rabies um fear going around like an outbreak in the town. They will bomb a cave full of bats, blow it up.

That will blow it up. And let's say there's a hundred thousand bats in there and uh point five percent of those have rabies, so that's five hundred rabid bats. They're killing off a hundred thousand, and then they're like, what's up with all these mosquitoes, why don't have malaria? Well, either that or the bats. They go after the ones they can easily find in caves, which are the ones that pollinate. They're not even vampire bats, so they're not

getting rabies from them anyway. So they're killing a bunch of bats that aren't spreading rabies at all, and that actually are right. But most pollinating bats don't come in contact with humans. The vampire bats are the ones you would have to really worry about catching rabies from. So they're not even getting the ones that are spreading the rabies.

Just misinformation. There's one more threat from humans that started to come to shape and fruition but didn't fully Back in World War two, did you hear about bat bombs? So there was a dude in the US who had this great idea and it was an attaching incendiary bombs to bats and then releasing the bats in Japan. That's pretty good idea. So this guy apparently had the ear of and I've read this in an Atlantic article. Um,

this guy had the ear of Eleanor Roosevelt. And it ended up becoming like an army research project that went far enough along that there were mishaps, like, uh, an airplane hangar blew up because some bats got released prematurely. A general's car blew up for the same reason. Um, And it almost happened, and then they just dropped it. What did Eleanor Roosevelt have to do with it? Well,

she was the the first lady at the time. Well, I know, but since when the first ladies not could like work with education and nutrition, like when she like, how about bombats? Eleanor Roosevelt definitely was seated at the right hand of the seed of power. She was a sharp lady. Crazy Yeah, bat bombs. She wasn't that sharp. She thought that was a good idea. I have the impression that she was doing it as a favor, like getting this guy entree to sure the army that the

war room. Yeah, so that's Eleanor Roosevelt. You got anything else? Nope. If you want to know more about bats, you can type that word into the search bar at how stuff works dot com and again go look up bat eating a banana. It's so adorable, yeah, or little baby bat burritos they have like the nurseries with a bunch of them, like nursing on bottles and wrapped up in little swaddles. So cute, very cute. Uh. And since I said adorable,

it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this one of the ten people that saw us perform in Washington Square Park. Oh yeah, the ten yep, So they get in any one of you if you email us, I'll read it on the air. All of them are missing time. Uh. Long time listener and fan here guys introduced my boyfriend to the podcast as well. You saved many hours of boardom on road trips. Have to say the recent episode about how Nazis attempted to invade Long Island in Florida

was one of my favorites ever. We've got a lot of great response from that one. By the way, I lived in New York City for eight years now and spent a lovely summer days on uh a mag Magonset, beach Amaganset. Jeez. Yeah, so the thought of a U boat rolling up there and depositing German spies with plans to attack New York is particularly chilling. My boyfriend and I attended your show in Washington Square Park and your big live show in New York City this summer, and

the latter is why I'm writing. I felt you, um should know, as a result of the topic you chose for the show, you cost me several nights of kitchen clean up duty. Before the show, we were grabbing drinks next door, and uh decided to make things interesting with a little bit as to what the topic would be. We came up with six possible categories. We thought it could fall into biology, geography, history, physics, current events, and

political social Uh it could have fallen into three of those. Yeah, and uh, we're not going to reveal it here, by the way, people, because we're touring that same show at least one more go around in this fall. And so if you have seen the show, we're gonna say this again and again, don't come again unless you just want to. Yeah, some people you know, like uh follow the Grateful Dead or fish around see the same show. No, they play a different show every night, and that's why they fall

him around. Well, not completely different every night and pretty much different. That's impossible. No, I mean like they played a different show every night. Well, they might alter songs, but there's not that they don't have three thousand songs. They have a lot of songs. These people see them hundreds of nights in a row. Yeah, all right, Well maybe we have some stuff heads that want to follow us around. Yeah, they're all like driving around in vans. Yeah,

we mixed our show up a little bit. All right. I think that's a good public announcement though, Like, yes, what you just did? So we scribbled these down on napkin. Did the draft style selection? Uh went back and forth picking categories at a feeling I was confident with my chances for the moment you announced the topic, blank, I knew I'd lost. He had political, social, and current events. So that's a bit of a hint. Yes it's not biology anyway, Guys who really enjoyed the live shows and

hope you come back to New York soon. And that is from Natalie bright Back and her boyfriend Hagen. Really yeah, Hoggen h a g. A. N. Hagan I worked for with Hagen right, Uh, I would say it should be Haggen and if they got married, he should take her last name and beggen Breitbach. That's a good one. That's a great name. That it sounds like there's oom lots

all over the place. Uh. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know how great you thought our show is or how excited you are about seeing our show, we would like to hear from you. You can tweet to us that that's why sk podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com,

slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff Works dot com