July 30, 2015 • 44 mins
They are creepy, sure, but they are also useful, cute and in great danger of extinction. Get a new lease on life from a new view of bats in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Chuck Bryant. I didn't know we were podcasting about dolphin.
That was my bat. Oh I thought it was a dolphin. No, No,
(00:25):
that was a bat. Well, then why are you wearing
your dolphin running shorts? That 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?
Remember the little uh like real runners. They still wear
those shorts or maybe it's all spandex now like super tight,
(00:45):
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
(01:06):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:51):
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
(02:12):
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.
(02:36):
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
(02:59):
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
(03:19):
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,
(03:41):
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
(04:01):
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
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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
(05:07):
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,
(05:27):
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
(05:48):
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
(06:09):
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,
(06:31):
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.
(06:55):
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
(07:16):
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,
(07:38):
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.
(08:00):
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,
(08:20):
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
(08:42):
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.
(09:05):
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,
(09:30):
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
(09:52):
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
(10:16):
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
(10:37):
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
(11:00):
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
(11:21):
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
(11:41):
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
(12:02):
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.
(12:31):
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
(12:53):
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.
(13:16):
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
(13:40):
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
(14:01):
about that. Let's all right, Josh. We talked about the
(14:25):
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
(14:47):
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
(15:08):
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
(15:30):
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
(15:52):
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
(16:13):
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,
(16:35):
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,
(16:57):
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,
(17:18):
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
(17:40):
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
(18:00):
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
(18:23):
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,
(18:44):
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
(19:06):
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.
(19:28):
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
(19:50):
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
(20:10):
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
(20:31):
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
(20:53):
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
(21:15):
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.
(21:36):
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
(21:57):
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
(22:18):
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,
(22:42):
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,
(23:03):
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
(23:37):
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
(24:00):
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,
(24:22):
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,
(24:45):
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.
(25:09):
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
(25:32):
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.
(25:53):
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
(26:13):
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
(26:33):
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
(26:54):
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
(27:14):
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
(27:35):
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.
(27:57):
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
(28:21):
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
(28:42):
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
(29:05):
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
(29:29):
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
(29:50):
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
(30:12):
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
(30:32):
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,
(30:54):
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,
(31:19):
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,
(31:42):
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
(32:04):
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
(32:27):
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,
(32:49):
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
(33:10):
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
(33:31):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:15):
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
(34:38):
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,
(34:59):
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
(35:22):
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
(35:43):
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
(36:04):
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
(36:28):
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,
(36:51):
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.
(37:13):
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
(37:34):
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
(37:55):
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,
(38:17):
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
(38:39):
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
(39:00):
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
(39:21):
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
(39:42):
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.
(40:04):
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.
(40:28):
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
(40:49):
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
(41:10):
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
(41:30):
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
(41:52):
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
(42:13):
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
(42:35):
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
(42:58):
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.
(43:19):
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.
(43:40):
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
(44:04):
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
(44:25):
sk podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com,
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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
(44:45):
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Chuck Bryant. I didn't know we were podcasting about dolphin.
That was my bat. Oh I thought it was a dolphin. No, No,
(00:25):
that was a bat. Well, then why are you wearing
your dolphin running shorts? That 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?
Remember the little uh like real runners. They still wear
those shorts or maybe it's all spandex now like super tight,
(00:45):
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
(01:06):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:51):
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
(02:12):
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.
(02:36):
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
(02:59):
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
(03:19):
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,
(03:41):
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
(04:01):
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
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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
(05:07):
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,
(05:27):
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
(05:48):
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
(06:09):
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,
(06:31):
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.
(06:55):
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
(07:16):
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,
(07:38):
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.
(08:00):
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,
(08:20):
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
(08:42):
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.
(09:05):
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,
(09:30):
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
(09:52):
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
(10:16):
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
(10:37):
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
(11:00):
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
(11:21):
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
(11:41):
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
(12:02):
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.
(12:31):
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
(12:53):
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.
(13:16):
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
(13:40):
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
(14:01):
about that. Let's all right, Josh. We talked about the
(14:25):
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
(14:47):
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
(15:08):
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
(15:30):
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
(15:52):
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
(16:13):
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,
(16:35):
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,
(16:57):
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,
(17:18):
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
(17:40):
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
(18:00):
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
(18:23):
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,
(18:44):
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
(19:06):
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.
(19:28):
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
(19:50):
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
(20:10):
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
(20:31):
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
(20:53):
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
(21:15):
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.
(21:36):
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
(21:57):
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
(22:18):
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,
(22:42):
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,
(23:03):
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
(23:37):
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
(24:00):
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,
(24:22):
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,
(24:45):
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.
(25:09):
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
(25:32):
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.
(25:53):
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
(26:13):
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
(26:33):
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
(26:54):
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
(27:14):
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
(27:35):
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.
(27:57):
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
(28:21):
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
(28:42):
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
(29:05):
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
(29:29):
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
(29:50):
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
(30:12):
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
(30:32):
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,
(30:54):
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,
(31:19):
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,
(31:42):
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
(32:04):
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
(32:27):
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,
(32:49):
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
(33:10):
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
(33:31):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:15):
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
(34:38):
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,
(34:59):
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
(35:22):
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
(35:43):
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
(36:04):
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
(36:28):
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,
(36:51):
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.
(37:13):
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
(37:34):
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
(37:55):
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,
(38:17):
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
(38:39):
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
(39:00):
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
(39:21):
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
(39:42):
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.
(40:04):
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.
(40:28):
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
(40:49):
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
(41:10):
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
(41:30):
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
(41:52):
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
(42:13):
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
(42:35):
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
(42:58):
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.
(43:19):
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.
(43:40):
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
(44:04):
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
(44:25):
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
(44:45):
dot com
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