Selects: How Bats Work

Hello friends, it's your friendly neighborhood podcaster here, Charles W. Chuck Chuckers, Chuck Tran Bryant, picking from our past July thirtieth, twenty fifteen. How bats work on baseball bats? Oh no, no, no, These are the little fuzzy winged, rodent looking things that a lot of people are scared of, but I think are super cool and super cute. Listen to how bats work right now.

Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

I didn't know we were podcasting about dolphin.

That was my bat.

Oh I thought it was a dolphin.

No, no, I was a bat.

Well, then why are you wearing your dolphin running shorts?

Has nothing to do with bats and everything to do with Dan Marino. They probably still have those dolphin running shorts. What are you talking about?

Yeah, I remember the little uh like real runners. They still wear those shorts, or maybe it's all spandex now like super tight.

Okay, but they.

Used to be just like a little wispy piece of but they were called dolphins. Well, I think that was the brand I wasn't familiar I remember, but you know, things were you know, the right gust of wind could reveal sure, lots of things.

I know what you're talking about. Uh, like short shorts, Yeah, run real flimsy one.

Real satiny, flimsy, wispy, and I think, uh, I think they were dolphin running shorts. And by the way, this this podcast is not sponsored by dolphin running shorts.

No, it's a 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 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 pretty 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've just stated that you're over the fence clearly in the bat yard. Pro bat pro bats me too. They never did anything to anybody on purpose, aside from some of them sucking your blood while you sleep. Aside from that, it's super rare. Bats seem to be pretty great animals.

It's very cute.

It's adorable. Yeah, there's also baby bat burrito videos. Yeah, they're wrapped up in a blanket, not a tortilla. Yeah, there's a lot of cute bat videos out there, because there's a lot of cute bats there. Sure are, my friend, And you might say, no, no, no, I've seen bats. They are as ugly as pure evil gets. Yeah, you're talking about what are called micro bats, the ones with the crazy nostrils that actually make you me gag.

Oh really? Oh yeah, I think they're cute too. I mean, I get it because they definitely look like literary ghules and fiends.

But which makes you wonder. I wonder if fiends and ghules were modeled after those types of bats.

Oh I'm sure.

Oh 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 seen a bat and then they made gargoles and 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.

Sure, yeah so, but but nothing like the flying fox are legit cute?

No, and actually this article needs to be updated. Man, So bats are there's actually, beats 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? Oh

It's a lot of bat species.

And they all belong to the order chirop Terra, which means hand wing, which we'll get to.

Yeah.

And then bats typically are subdivided into two suborders. And it used to be mega chirop Terra and micro chirop terra.

Is that not right anymore?

No, because science is 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 that'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. Yeah, this is the case with bats. So it used to be based on their size megabats and micro bats or mega chirop terra and micro chirop terra. Now, because of genetic testing, some of the very small bats are now in the megabat order sub order and vice versa.

But those are still suborders they are, but.

They've renamed them to megabats and micro bats.

Oh, I gotcha.

But so, for example, the long tongued fruit bat is considered a megabat, but its wingspan is only about ten inches, right, it's a little thing.

Whereas if you look at the flying fox or the fruit bat Asia African and Australia, those things are adorable and they are huge, Yeah, like six foot wingspans on some of these bats. Boys. Yeah, 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 take you to hell with.

Well, that's what evokes. I think is 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 of bats.

Uh, the what is the the cute little guy that Yeah, I posted a picture that fella on Facebook today just as a teaser. People didn't know that we're going to 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, yeah, top notch disease reservoirs for the diseases that you and I can catch, like ebola and rabies.

Sure, and they think one of the reasons is because they and we'll talk about this later, but they're so comfortable with each other, they just huddle together, right, 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. Yeah, figuratively we are, but not in reality. Bats are literally elbow to elbow in their colonies, so disease just spreads anywhere at once among them.

Yeah, however, about the raby scare, they are carriers of rabies, but not like people think. I think less than one half of one percent of bats are rabid, one half point five percent. And you're more way more likely to get rabies from raccoons and skunks And.

Oh, okay, well there you go. That puts it in perspective because I like any raccoon I see. Maybe I should stop doing that.

You should probably stop doing that.

They bite me a lot.

Yeah, she get checked out.

Maybe I should.

Uh so, yes, you said how many species about twelve hundred, and aside from varying in size like you said that, just a look of them, like the flying fox looks like we said, like 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 nose that makes you me 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? Oh yeah, sure, it's it's just bat taxonomy is really up for grabs right now. It's really exciting time.

Let's say, yeah, let's say generally speaking, then.

Okay, one of the other distinctions too, typically that divides these two suborders, chuck, is what they eat. Yeah, the micro bats tend to be carnivorous. Yes, so it includes vampire bats, but vampire bats are not. Not all bats are vampire bats, even if they're carnivorous. No, most bats just the insects if they're carnivorous, Yeah, like mosquitoes. But megabats, including the big ones with the six foot wingspan. Yeah, the flying fox I think you said those are they're

Yeah, 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. Yeah, in researching this, the Geman word for bats is frida muse.

I expected more from you than that, yeah, 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 a 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, 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 hand, yeah, like you were going to do jazz hands exactly, and then imagine that there was a webbed membrane called a How would you pronounce that pattagym, patti gyum, patagium.

I don't have one of those too.

Those are the wings, tagium, 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 connected. That is way more what a bat's wing that looks like in functions like than a bird's wing. Right.

So a bird's wing has rigid bones in it, right, Yes, And the muscles that control the wings are located basically at what would amount to your armpits.

Yeah, like a socket.

So like just do the chicken dance real quick and think about what you're doing. Yes, right, you're you're not. There's not really any movement in the actual arm. It's all at the shoulder joint. Same with birds. With bats, that is not the case because they're basically like winged hands,

Yes, absolutely, like a thousand times. There's no science behind that.

I would say even like fifteen hundred times. Okay, well, I mean, if there's if we're going without science, let's just say like a million times more.

Yeah, a gazillion. 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. 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.

Right.

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.

Right. They have like small, withered little legs that they basically drag behind them as they crawl.

Yeah, and so that's the why they climb trees. They climb up to a high launch point, right, and we'll get to the hangings meter because that's super cool too, and then just fall and start flying, right.

And that's what beds do. That's what and that's how bads fly.

Scientifically speaking, they believe that bats used to not fly, and thanks to natural selection, the ones who could leap further and further from tree to tree were more successful, and that eventually led to that patagium being formed.

Yeah, they can fly kind of like lemurs are flying squirrels or something like that. Right, Yeah, So like one of them was born with an extra skin flap and everyone was like, you freak, and then it flew and they were like, wow, who's the freak now exactly look at all these insects I got. 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

Nice 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 able to hunt really well, but it's really a one two punch along with their echolocation or echo locative abilities.

I think that's a word.

Is that a word?

Yeah? Right, So you can maneuver all day long, but if you can't find your prey, you're.

Just doing a weird dance, right.

Exactly, You're just showing off. And the way that bats find their prey. There's a common myth, Chuck that bats blind is bata, that bats can't see absolutely untrue. Ye, most bats have like perfectly good vision.

Yeah, like exceptional vision.

Even.

Yeah, there was a study at some German study I believe, that found that bats have rods and cones, which means they can see color in the daylight as well as like black and white stuff.

Sure right, old movies.

Sure yeah, before Ted Turner got his hands on.

Them, oh boy, And that never went anywhere, it really didn't.

But now it's like there, it's done. Now. Wizard of Oz is like gaudy as Gaudy is like the terra Cotta Army. Originally, well, no, Wizard.

Of Oz always was both because when they get to oz it's color Oh.

Yeah, you're right, yeah what what? Oh? Gone with the wind?

I think he did colorI he did colorize it.

Okay, anyway, can you tell it's been a little while since we've done this.

No, 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. Okay, So bats echo locate as well as see. And again I'm not quite sure. I couldn't find this chuck, but I think microbats might be the only type to echo locate. Oh really, I don't think all bats do. The reason why is because if you're a hippie pollen eating herbivore bat, sure

Know, yeah, and smash it and then just like lean over and suck.

There's some nectar. Yeah, okay. If you are seeking flying insects as your prey, then yeah, you better be able to echo locate. And we can actually echo locate. There's a man who is sightless who can echo locate, and he's a human being he 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? Yeah, I don't remember that much.

Well, if you've ever been to a canyon, let's say a Grand Canyon. Okay, let's say the Grand Canyon. Sure, and you boom your your voice out there, Please don't say hello, or does 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.

Okay, Yeah, Wait, what would you recommend for an echo?

Man?

That's your go to echo words?

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, many moto, That's what I would do.

You could also do cockcock cachaw, see a chicken dance.

Oh yeah, that'd be good. So whatever you choose to go with, at your next visit to the canyons, 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 echoing off of a mosquito, sure, yeah or whatever.

Yeah, when you make sound waves and it travels and it hits that canyon wall, it comes back to you, right yeah, And bats do the same thing. But like you said, they're bouncing off of a mosquito or some other flighted bug. Sure that it eats, And just from standard echo location, the bat can identify, oh, there's a mosquito there, Like all this other stuff, all the other sound that I just put out there came back at a much lower rate than this little spot did, and

Oh yeah.

Basically bat's echo location 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 away you are and where you are, and what position you're facing or what direction you're going, all through lightwaves.

Yeah, in an instant, like we don't have to think about that like we see it and it's there.

The bat's not calculating all of this, and it's just getting this Information's brain is automatically putting it together. And what it amounts again to like a visio of a visible visiospatial field.

Wow.

Right, And so it knows there's a mosquito. It's about this big, it's about yay big. It's traveling at this right 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 its echo. Yeah, that's echolocation.

It's amazing.

So and also I should say, chuck, it's really good that this is ultrasonic, because some of them go up to like one hundred and twenty decibels, which is the equivalent of having a smoke detector like a couple inches from your ear.

That is not fun.

No, it shatters your life.

Yeah, all right, So let's talk about the different parts. They will determine the distance of the mosquito by how long it takes that noise to return you and I could do that with simple math. At a canyon, we could actually calculate how far away that other wall is.

With maths you and the canyons.

You know, 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 right. That's pretty easy. 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 lots of little folds that will help indicate

And again to the bat, all this is happening automatically. It's brain is putting all this information together, and the bat knows there's a mosquito right below it.

That's right. The size is determined by the intensity of echo. Something 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 they also use 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. Yeah, let me try again. It's tough you ready. Yeah, So the wavelength of something is set, it's determined, right, yes, But if something is coming near you, that wavelength has to be compressed in a shorter space.

Yes.

So therefore the frequency the pitch increases. If something's traveling away from you, it has a lot more space between it and you to fill up that same wavelength 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 to people like, oh Josh, so close?

I really practice?

But this one more thing. So that is how they determine distance, location, size, direction and direction.

Right.

Amazing.

And also the actual sound that they're making when they echo locate. A lot of bats fly around with their mouths though, Yeah, and they look like they're just kind of slack jawed yocles.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well it turns out they're making their echo location 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. Agate. And some bats also, especially the microbats that have the crazy nostrils that make you me gag. Yes, those actually will echo locate and generate the sound through their nose.

Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's why they look that way. They're like little speakers.

Right, So, Chuck, I think we nailed echo location, don't you. Oh yes, and the Doppler effect.

Maybe put that one to bed.

And we will talk more about bats, including their little families that they stay in right after this, Chuck. Yes, so you talked a little bit about bats and how they love to huddle together. And it depends on the kind of bat. Yeah, the bloodthirsty bats, vampire bats.

Yeah.

They actually tend to roost in small, little colonies or solitarily. 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. Oh yeah, smoke it out.

Uh No, I didn't smoke it. I put on a leather coat over another coat, gloves.

Recycled helmet before you do any like battle with nature.

A laundry basket in a broom and I lost. But 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 enormous colonies, some often composed of millions of bats.

Millions. Yeah, pretty amazing. Yeah. Well you mentioned that they do all this feeding and activity at dawn, dusk, and overnight. Yeah, because they will get eaten by hawks and falcons and things during the day and other predators too, so they like to stay away during the day and hide out, Like you said, the caves, dark places, sure, 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 and they hang upside down is not to look creepy. 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 on to something upside down, you get tired. Yeah, you've got to really tense your muscles. Not with the bats, 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'd 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, huh is we would you know, clench our fist around something which contracts muscles, which are attached to your fingers by tendons. It's all one big 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 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 close. Yeah, under whatever they're hanging from.

Yeah, it's like 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 talons, I guess we should say, right, yeah, 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 if they die hanging there, they will stay hanging there.

And they can go to sleep. That's where they sleep. So 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, Yeah, which requires a lot of energy. That puts bats at a particular disadvantage because they fly and that requires a ton of energy. Mammals are not

Yeah, like David Blaine might, Yes, he was preparing for like some weird stunt. Yeah, they're controlling their own internal temperature and their own metabolic rate.

Right. So while they're doing this, when they're 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. That's right, 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 do.

Is that gonna be our little tag maybe this episode? All right, well, let's talk a little bat. It's called this fact in fiction since that's what this section is called in the article. Pretty original. Like we said, there leathery wing in their weird faces and their resemblance to ghouls and demons make them vilified. Yeah, but bats are our friends because they eat tons and tons of insects.

Literally tons.

Yeah, what was the stat on that there's twelve hundred mosquitos in an hour one bat?

That's a little brown bat in North America. It's the most common North American bat species, twelve hundred mosquitos in an hour, Which you say, who cares? There's trillions and trillions of mosquitoes. It doesn't matter too well. There are a lot of bats, that's right. There's a bat cave in Brocken Cave or Bracken 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 crop ruining insects, So farmers frequently take their hats off and wave to the bats. Hello, Hello, in something of a salute when the bats fly by.

Yeah.

Have you ever seen a farmer do that to a bat? Yeah, he's really.

Be pumping round up in one hand and waving at the fats in the other.

You'll bring a little two to your eye.

They are plant pollinators, like we said, they will go in and gather nectar, and when they do this they get pollen on their bodies. When they fly away, they spread that pollen. So specifically they're pollinators of bananas, figs, mangoes, cashews, and a gave. So if you are hammered on tequila right now.

Thank a bat.

Thank a bat.

And you mentioned that colony in Texas in Austin.

Right, Yeah, under the Congress Avenue Bridge, very famous spot to In fact, it's a big tourist attraction.

Now.

Yeah, they've embraced so.

They're bringing tourist dollars in. Two. They pollinate, they eat pest bugs, and they bring in the tourists.

Yeah. I think some of them are uber drivers as well.

This is trying to eke out a living, yep, exactly.

What else let's talk about the guano. You know that is it's poop. It's batpoop, and guano is a very rich in nitrogen and is a great fertilizer. And not only that, but at one point the US Army and even further back, the Southern Army, the Confederate Army, I believe they're called, used they collected bat guano to use his gunpowder yea and explosives.

They extracted the saltpeter from it.

Crazy 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, right or not 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 and not it wasn't back quano, but burg guano two has been used and wars have been fought over it. It's such an effective, crazy fertilizer and power energy source that. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So go read fourteen ninety one or fourteen ninety three, I can't remember. Talks about this.

You tail on the on the scarier side, though. You did mention vampire bats. Yeah, and they do feed on blood, but this article is keen to point out that they are not bloodthirsty man hunters.

They will know they're man's stalkers.

They'll eat a cow, and when I say eat a cow, they won't eat a cow. No, the u cow doesn't even You know, it doesn't hurt the cow that.

Much, right, No, unless the cow contracts an infection or something from it.

Yeah.

Yeah, vampire bats usually need about one to two tablespoons of blood a night, which it can easily get from a cow without any harm to the cow as far as blood loss goes, right, sure, And the cow typically doesn't even know what's going on because the vampire bats have very sharp teeth. Yeah, that 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.

Even though I love that's a crawling bat with those wings is a little.

Creepy coming to suck your blood. Yeah, yeah, oh.

No, it's not sucking blood. Remember it's an anticoagulant, so it just opens.

Lapping up blood. Apparently. They also have a cool little organ in their nose. It's like a heat sensing organ, so they can find like where the blood is closest to the skin. Then go wow, and then.

Go let's talk about reproduction for a second. They reproduce typically only once a year.

Oh, bat reproduct.

Yeah, oh you thought it just like us.

I thought you're about to sing salt and pepper.

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 produce one baby a year.

Yeah, on average. Some can can reproduce more, Yeah, but not, it doesn't happen that much. They're called pups, which is very cute. A pup weighs twenty five percent of the mother's body weight, which is remarkable.

Because they often nurse while the mother's flying around.

Yeah, so that'd be like one hundred and twenty pound woman having a thirty pound baby.

Just attached to her while she's flying exactly.

Yeah, they live, like we said, in large colonies, and 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. It's pretty neat.

Yeah, And apparently bats are very altruistic, Like they've recorded acts of bats going and bringing food back for bats who are sick in the colony. Yeah, that's pretty neat. Pretty you don't find that very often in nature.

No, not even with man right in many cases.

Yea.

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. 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 dance in there.

Absolutely. 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, about six weeks to four months, and then the bat is fully independent and can fly on its own, which is great. And this is the second fact of the podcast to me, Ok, the female bat is so smart they can delay there, They can delay their fertilization based on the best time

They have some serious willpower.

Well, they want to survive, you know. Yeah, they are ultimate survivors.

You know, bats have a real problem facing them right now, Chuck with white nose fungus.

I know, and this is sort of a well it's not only a threat, but it's a bit of a mystery, isn't it of Like why it's so widespread all of a sudden.

Well, it's just spreading like wildfire, in part because bat colonies are so huddled and close together. Sure, from what I understand, it's just the ones that hibernate that are having the problem because this white nose fungus it is like it's a fungus that grows on their nose, and apparently that 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

Wow.

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 or that kind of thing.

That's awful.

Yeah, and apparently it is really deadly, like some hibernaculas, which is like a hibernating colony, have like a ninety to one hundred percent mortality rate when 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 some parts of South America when there's a rabies fear going around, like an outbreak in the t down, they will bomb a cave full of bats, blow it up. They will blow it up. And let's say there's one hundred thousand bats in there, and zero point five percent of those have rabies, So that's five hundred rabid bats they're killing off one hundred thousand, and then they're like, what's up with all these mosquitos, why do I have malaria?

Well, either that or the bats they go after are 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.

Well, I mean, and leaving the ones that actually are.

Right, but most pollinating bats don't come into contact with humans exactly. The vampire bats are the ones you would have to really worry about catching rabies from.

Yeah.

Yeah, 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?

Nope?

So there was a dude in the US who had this great idea, and it was attaching incendiary bombs to bats and then releasing the bats in Japan.

That's a pretty good idea.

So this guy apparently had the ear of and I've read this in an Atlantic article. 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 an airplane hanger blew up because some bats got released prematurely. A general's car blew up for the same reason. And it almost happened, and then they just dropped it.

What did Eleanor Roosevelt have to do with it?

Well, she was the first lady at the time.

Well, I no, but since when the first ladies not could like work with education and nutrition, like how about bombats?

Eleanor Roosevelt definitely was seated at the right hand of the seat of power. She was a sharp lady. Crazy yeah bat bombs.

Well, 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 on trade.

Sure, the army, the war room.

Yeah, 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 HowStuffWorks dot com and again go look up bat eating a banana is so adorable?

Yeah, or the little baby bat burritos they have like a nurseries with a bunch of them, like nursing on bottles and wrapped up in little swaddles.

So cute, very cute. 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.

Longtime listener and fan. Here guys to introduce my boyfriend to the podcast as well. You saved us many hours of boredom on row 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.

Yeah.

By the way, I lived in New York City for eight years now and spent a lovely summer days on a mag and set beach Ammagansett A jeez, 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, I attended your show in Washington Square Park and your big live show in New York City this summer,

Political social falling into three of those.

Yeah, and we're not going to reveal it here, by the way, people, because we're touring that same.

Showy at least one more go around with.

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 follow The Grateful Dead or fishing around see the same show.

No, they play a different show every night, That's why they follow them around.

Well, not completely different every.

Night and pretty much different that's impossible. No, I mean, like they play a different show every night.

Well, they might alter songs, but there's no 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, maybe they're all like driving around in bands.

Yeah, we mix our show up a little bit.

Sure, all right, I think that's a good public announcement though.

Like, yes, what you just did?

Thank you?

So we scribbled these down on a napkin, did the draft style selection, 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 Breitbach and her boyfriend Hagen.

Really yeah, Hogen, h A G A.

N Hagen.

I work with Hagen, all right.

I would say it should be Hagen and if they got married, he should take her last name and be Hogen Breitbach.

That's a good one. That's a great name. It sounds like there's umlats all over the place, all over 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 at s ysk podcast. You can join us on

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