July 8, 2023 • 45 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 classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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
(00:22):
a lot of people are scared of, but I think
are super cool and super cute. Listen to how bats
work right now.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I didn't know we were podcasting about dolphin.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
That was my bat.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Oh I thought it was a dolphin.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
No, no, I was a bat.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, then why are you wearing your dolphin running shorts?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
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?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, I remember the little uh like real runners. They
still wear those shorts, or maybe it's all spandex now
like super tight.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Okay, but they.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I know what you're talking about. Uh, like short shorts, Yeah,
run real flimsy one.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
No, it's a sponsored by the Bats of America.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's right. Which I always have liked bats, but after
reading this, I'm so much more in love with bats.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Oh yeah, they need animals.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
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
(02:28):
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.
And if you're on the fence about bats and you
want to go over to the pro bat side, go
onto YouTube and type in bat eating a banana.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
It's very cute.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
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
(03:07):
talking about what are called micro bats, the ones with
the crazy nostrils that actually make you me gag.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh really? Oh yeah, I think they're cute too. I mean,
I get it because they definitely look like literary ghules
and fiends.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
But which makes you wonder. I wonder if fiends and
ghules were modeled after those types of bats.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Oh okay, I didn't realize it was so obvious.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well no, I mean it would have to, because that's
a real thing, and they look so much alike.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Maybe no one had seen a bat and then they
made gargoles and like what a coincidence.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I know what you were driving at. Though. They are
cute in their own really weird uncanny way.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Sure, yeah so, but but nothing like the flying fox
are legit cute?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
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 didn't even come close, gotcha. Bats are mammals, Yeah,
and they're more closely related to humans than say, like
(04:22):
the fox or the rat or whatever that they're frequently
described as being the flying version of Sure, and there's
I think something like twelve hundred species of bats.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
It's a lot of bat species.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
And they all belong to the order chirop Terra, which
means hand wing, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
And then bats typically are subdivided into two suborders. And
it used to be mega chirop Terra and micro chirop terra.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Is that not right anymore?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Like this skunk looks like a raccoon, but they're not
the same thing.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But those are still suborders they are, but.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
They've renamed them to megabats and micro bats.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Oh, I gotcha.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
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,
(06:07):
little fuzzy fox and then he goes.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Right, it envelops you and take you to hell with.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Oh, I wonder if vampires were invented independently of bats.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Oh, okay, well there you go. That puts it in
perspective because I like any raccoon I see. Maybe I
should stop doing that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
You should probably stop doing that.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
They bite me a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, she get checked out.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Maybe I should.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
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
(08:29):
nose that makes you me gag.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Let's say, yeah, let's say generally speaking, then.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
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
(09:13):
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
just hippies. They just eat plants.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, that's it, like literally nectar and spread pollen. Yeah,
it's pretty great, like birds. Why is that funny?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
That translates into flying mice. Yes for the curious.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
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
(10:41):
then imagine that there was a webbed membrane called a
How would you pronounce that pattagym, patti gyum, patagium.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I don't have one of those too.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, like a socket.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
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,
which is the reason their order is named that. Right. Yes,
(11:36):
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, much more easily.
And they're much more depth at maneuvering mid air than
your average bird is.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yes, absolutely, like a thousand times. There's no science behind that.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Right. They have like small, withered little legs that they
basically drag behind them as they crawl.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
And that's what beds do. That's what and that's how
bads fly.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
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,
(13:43):
which we likely did as well, which is why we're
related to bats. Most likely we share some sort of
single common ancestor that dwelt in trees, and probably bats
evolved somewhere around one hundred million years ago, is what
they believe. But I think the oldest fossils they found
are like fifty million in change. Yeah, and these fossils
(14:04):
that they found in Wyoming show that the wings are there,
but the ears are not developed, which suggests that flying
developed among bats before echolocation did, which has been a
long standing 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.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Nice well, right for this break, we will talk about
that echo location. How about that.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Let's all right, Josh.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I think that's a word.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Is that a word?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah? Right, So you can maneuver all day long, but
if you can't find your prey, you're.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Just doing a weird dance, right.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, like exceptional vision.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Even.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Sure right, old movies.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Sure yeah, before Ted Turner got his hands on.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Them, oh boy, And that never went anywhere, it really didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Of Oz always was both because when they get to
oz it's color Oh.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, you're right, yeah what what? Oh? Gone with the wind?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I think he did colorI he did colorize it.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Okay, anyway, can you tell it's been a little while
since we've done this.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
No, I think it's great.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
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
(16:46):
because if you're a hippie pollen eating herbivore bat, sure
you don't need to echo locate your food. You can
just fly around until you run into a flower, right, you.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Know, yeah, and smash it and then just like lean
over and suck.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
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
(17:22):
just taught himself to echo locate.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Did they call him batman?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Probably? Yeah, I don't remember that much.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
That, better than Pink Floyd lyrics.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
No, if it's in that context, then it passes.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Okay, Yeah, Wait, what would you recommend for an echo?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Man?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
That's your go to echo words?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Definitely not echo.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I think echo is great, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
You could also do cockcock cachaw, see a chicken dance.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
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
(18:57):
sound that I just put out there came back at
a much lower rate than this little spot did, and
that spot is probably a mosquito. But it gets way
more detailed than that.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
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,
(19:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, in an instant, like we don't have to think
about that like we see it and it's there.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
That is not fun.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
No, it shatters your life.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
With maths you and the canyons.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
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.
(21:12):
It's not just like a big dumb human ear, like,
we have lots of little folds that will help indicate
its vertical position as well. So if they know it's
coming from above, it'll sound different in the ear than
if it's below right.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And they also use the Doppler effect chuck to determine
whether something is going away from it or toward it.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Why do I have feeling you're gonna get email to
people like, oh Josh, so close?
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I really practice?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
But this one more thing. So that is how they
determine distance, location, size, direction and direction.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
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
(23:25):
will echo locate and generate the sound through their nose.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's why they look that way.
They're like little speakers.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Right, So, Chuck, I think we nailed echo location, don't you.
Oh yes, and the Doppler effect.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Maybe put that one to bed.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
And we will talk more about bats, including their little
families that they stay in right after this, Chuck. Yes,
(24:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
They actually tend to roost in small, little colonies or solitarily.
I believe, sometimes in like really hard to reach places.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Like the Lost Boys.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, yeah, like your fireplace.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
I had to battle a bat once in a fireplace.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. Oh yeah, smoke it out.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Uh No, I didn't smoke it. I put on a
leather coat over another coat, gloves.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Recycled helmet before you do any like battle with nature.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
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
(25:11):
often composed of millions of bats.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
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
(25:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
This is the fact of the show for me.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
I think you should take it.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
And all the blood would rush to your head too,
and you just pass out. It'd be really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
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,
(26:59):
or to grab that coffee.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
No, their tendons are only connected to the upper body.
No muscle involve whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
So it requires no energy whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right or talons, I guess we should say, right, yeah,
but it requires no energy none whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
And bats will actually like they'll die in that position sometimes.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
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.
(28:22):
That puts bats at a particular disadvantage because they fly
and that requires a ton of energy. Mammals are not
designed to fly. To generate the energy needed to fly,
bats can do it, but to do it, they have
to enter what's called a state of torpor every day. Yeah,
And basically, while they're hanging upside down, they get super
(28:44):
super sleepy, and they get so sleepy that their metabolism
starts to slow, and in their internal temperature falls and
becomes about an equilibrium with the external temperature. So they
go from warm blooded to essentially cold blooded during a
(29:04):
single day.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
There's a lot of different bats and a lot of
different things that bats do.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
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
(30:03):
ghouls and demons make them vilified. Yeah, but bats are
our friends because they eat tons and tons of insects.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Literally tons.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, what was the stat on that there's twelve hundred
mosquitos in an hour one bat?
Speaker 3 (30:19):
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
(30:40):
million bats. It's a colony and every night they eat
two hundred tons.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Of insects two hundred tons.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Have you ever seen a farmer do that to a bat? Yeah,
he's really.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Be pumping round up in one hand and waving at
the fats in the other.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
You'll bring a little two to your eye.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Thank a bat.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Thank a bat.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
And you mentioned that colony in Texas in Austin.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Right, Yeah, under the Congress Avenue Bridge, very famous spot
to In fact, it's a big tourist attraction.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, they've embraced so.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
They're bringing tourist dollars in. Two. They pollinate, they eat
pest bugs, and they bring in the tourists.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah. I think some of them are uber drivers as well.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
This is trying to eke out a living, yep, exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
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
(32:24):
believe they're called, used they collected bat guano to use
his gunpowder yea and explosives.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
They extracted the saltpeter from it.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
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.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
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.
(33:10):
So go read fourteen ninety one or fourteen ninety three,
I can't remember. Talks about this.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
They will know they're man's stalkers.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Much, right, No, unless the cow contracts an infection or
something from it.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
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
(34:04):
anticoagulant in it, so the blood just kind of trickles
out and keeps coming and then the vampire bat flies away.
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.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Even though I love that's a crawling bat with those
wings is a little.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Creepy coming to suck your blood. Yeah, yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
No, it's not sucking blood. Remember it's an anticoagulant, so
it just opens.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Go let's talk about reproduction for a second. They reproduce
typically only once a year.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Oh, bat reproduct.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, oh you thought it just like us.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
I thought you're about to sing salt and pepper.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yeah, they produce one baby a year.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Because they often nurse while the mother's flying around.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, so that'd be like one hundred and twenty pound
woman having a thirty pound baby.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Just attached to her while she's flying exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
No, not even with man right in many cases.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Anyway, it's like an eighth grade dance in there.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
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,
(36:56):
They can delay their fertilization based on the best time
to have a baby bat. Really yeah, So they can
have the sex in the fall and hold that sperm
and release the sperm to meet the eggs like six
months later in the spring. Wow, isn't that amazing. They've
(37:17):
learned to actually control their own cycle.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
They have some serious willpower.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Well, they want to survive, you know. Yeah, they are
ultimate survivors.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
You know, bats have a real problem facing them right now,
Chuck with white nose fungus.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
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,
(38:01):
and when they wake up, they're in big trouble because
an animal that hibernates has just enough energy store to
make it through the hibernation period. If they wake up
and blow a bunch of energy, like bringing their metabolism
and body heat back up to normal levels, and then
try to go back into hibernation, they'll starve to death
before the winner's over.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
That's awful.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Holy cow.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Yeah, and it's a real problem. They don't know how
to stop it.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
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,
(39:12):
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?
Speaker 3 (39:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Well, I mean, and leaving the ones that actually are.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, so they're not even getting the ones that are
spreading the rabies.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Just misinformation.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
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?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
That's a pretty good idea.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
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
(40:34):
they just dropped it.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
What did Eleanor Roosevelt have to do with it?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Well, she was the first lady at the time.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Well, I no, but since when the first ladies not
could like work with education and nutrition, like how about bombats?
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Eleanor Roosevelt definitely was seated at the right hand of
the seat of power. She was a sharp lady. Crazy
yeah bat bombs.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Well, she wasn't that sharp. She thought that was a
good idea.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I have the impression that she was doing it as
a favor, like getting this guy on trade.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Sure, the army, the war room.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah, yeah, so that's Eleanor Roosevelt. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Nope.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
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?
Speaker 1 (41:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
So cute, very cute. And since I said adorable, it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
All of them are missing time.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
From that one.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
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.
(42:29):
My boyfriend, 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
should know as a result of the topic you chose
for the show, you cost me several nights of kitchen
clean up duty. Before the show, we were grabbing drinks
next door and decided to make things interesting. With little
bet as to what the topic would be. We came
(42:50):
up with six possible categories. We thought it could fall
into biology, geography, history, physics, current events, and.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Political social falling into three of those.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, and we're not going to reveal it here, by
the way, people, because we're touring that same.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Showy at least one more go around with.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
No, they play a different show every night, That's why
they follow them around.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Well, not completely different every.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Night and pretty much different that's impossible. No, I mean,
like they play a different show every night.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Well, they might alter songs, but there's no they don't
have three thousand songs.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
They have a lot of songs.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yeah, maybe they're all like driving around in bands.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yeah, we mix our show up a little bit.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Sure, all right, I think that's a good public announcement though.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Like, yes, what you just did?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (43:55):
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
(44:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Really yeah, Hogen, h A G A.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
N Hagen.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I work with Hagen, all right.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I would say it should be Hagen and if they
got married, he should take her last name and be
Hogen Breitbach.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
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
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
(45:00):
send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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
(00:22):
a lot of people are scared of, but I think
are super cool and super cute. Listen to how bats
work right now.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I didn't know we were podcasting about dolphin.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
That was my bat.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Oh I thought it was a dolphin.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
No, no, I was a bat.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Well, then why are you wearing your dolphin running shorts?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
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?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, I remember the little uh like real runners. They
still wear those shorts, or maybe it's all spandex now
like super tight.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Okay, but they.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I know what you're talking about. Uh, like short shorts, Yeah,
run real flimsy one.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
No, it's a sponsored by the Bats of America.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's right. Which I always have liked bats, but after
reading this, I'm so much more in love with bats.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Oh yeah, they need animals.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
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
(02:28):
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.
And if you're on the fence about bats and you
want to go over to the pro bat side, go
onto YouTube and type in bat eating a banana.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
It's very cute.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
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
(03:07):
talking about what are called micro bats, the ones with
the crazy nostrils that actually make you me gag.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh really? Oh yeah, I think they're cute too. I mean,
I get it because they definitely look like literary ghules
and fiends.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
But which makes you wonder. I wonder if fiends and
ghules were modeled after those types of bats.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Oh I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Oh okay, I didn't realize it was so obvious.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well no, I mean it would have to, because that's
a real thing, and they look so much alike.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Maybe no one had seen a bat and then they
made gargoles and like what a coincidence.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I know what you were driving at. Though. They are
cute in their own really weird uncanny way.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Sure, yeah so, but but nothing like the flying fox
are legit cute?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
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 didn't even come close, gotcha. Bats are mammals, Yeah,
and they're more closely related to humans than say, like
(04:22):
the fox or the rat or whatever that they're frequently
described as being the flying version of Sure, and there's
I think something like twelve hundred species of bats.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
It's a lot of bat species.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
And they all belong to the order chirop Terra, which
means hand wing, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
And then bats typically are subdivided into two suborders. And
it used to be mega chirop Terra and micro chirop terra.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Is that not right anymore?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Like this skunk looks like a raccoon, but they're not
the same thing.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But those are still suborders they are, but.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
They've renamed them to megabats and micro bats.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Oh, I gotcha.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
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,
(06:07):
little fuzzy fox and then he goes.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Right, it envelops you and take you to hell with.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Oh, I wonder if vampires were invented independently of bats.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Oh, okay, well there you go. That puts it in
perspective because I like any raccoon I see. Maybe I
should stop doing that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
You should probably stop doing that.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
They bite me a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, she get checked out.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Maybe I should.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
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
(08:29):
nose that makes you me gag.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Let's say, yeah, let's say generally speaking, then.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
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
(09:13):
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
just hippies. They just eat plants.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, that's it, like literally nectar and spread pollen. Yeah,
it's pretty great, like birds. Why is that funny?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
That translates into flying mice. Yes for the curious.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
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
(10:41):
then imagine that there was a webbed membrane called a
How would you pronounce that pattagym, patti gyum, patagium.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I don't have one of those too.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
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.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, like a socket.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
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,
which is the reason their order is named that. Right. Yes,
(11:36):
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, much more easily.
And they're much more depth at maneuvering mid air than
your average bird is.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yes, absolutely, like a thousand times. There's no science behind that.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Right. They have like small, withered little legs that they
basically drag behind them as they crawl.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
And that's what beds do. That's what and that's how
bads fly.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
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,
(13:43):
which we likely did as well, which is why we're
related to bats. Most likely we share some sort of
single common ancestor that dwelt in trees, and probably bats
evolved somewhere around one hundred million years ago, is what
they believe. But I think the oldest fossils they found
are like fifty million in change. Yeah, and these fossils
(14:04):
that they found in Wyoming show that the wings are there,
but the ears are not developed, which suggests that flying
developed among bats before echolocation did, which has been a
long standing 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.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Nice well, right for this break, we will talk about
that echo location. How about that.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Let's all right, Josh.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I think that's a word.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Is that a word?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah? Right, So you can maneuver all day long, but
if you can't find your prey, you're.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Just doing a weird dance, right.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, like exceptional vision.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Even.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Sure right, old movies.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Sure yeah, before Ted Turner got his hands on.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Them, oh boy, And that never went anywhere, it really didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Of Oz always was both because when they get to
oz it's color Oh.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, you're right, yeah what what? Oh? Gone with the wind?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I think he did colorI he did colorize it.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Okay, anyway, can you tell it's been a little while
since we've done this.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
No, I think it's great.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
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
(16:46):
because if you're a hippie pollen eating herbivore bat, sure
you don't need to echo locate your food. You can
just fly around until you run into a flower, right, you.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Know, yeah, and smash it and then just like lean
over and suck.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
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
(17:22):
just taught himself to echo locate.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Did they call him batman?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Probably? Yeah, I don't remember that much.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
That, better than Pink Floyd lyrics.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
No, if it's in that context, then it passes.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Okay, Yeah, Wait, what would you recommend for an echo?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Man?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
That's your go to echo words?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Definitely not echo.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I think echo is great, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
You could also do cockcock cachaw, see a chicken dance.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
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
(18:57):
sound that I just put out there came back at
a much lower rate than this little spot did, and
that spot is probably a mosquito. But it gets way
more detailed than that.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
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,
(19:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, in an instant, like we don't have to think
about that like we see it and it's there.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
That is not fun.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
No, it shatters your life.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
With maths you and the canyons.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
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.
(21:12):
It's not just like a big dumb human ear, like,
we have lots of little folds that will help indicate
its vertical position as well. So if they know it's
coming from above, it'll sound different in the ear than
if it's below right.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And they also use the Doppler effect chuck to determine
whether something is going away from it or toward it.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Why do I have feeling you're gonna get email to
people like, oh Josh, so close?
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I really practice?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
But this one more thing. So that is how they
determine distance, location, size, direction and direction.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
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
(23:25):
will echo locate and generate the sound through their nose.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's why they look that way.
They're like little speakers.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Right, So, Chuck, I think we nailed echo location, don't you.
Oh yes, and the Doppler effect.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Maybe put that one to bed.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
And we will talk more about bats, including their little
families that they stay in right after this, Chuck. Yes,
(24:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
They actually tend to roost in small, little colonies or solitarily.
I believe, sometimes in like really hard to reach places.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Like the Lost Boys.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, yeah, like your fireplace.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
I had to battle a bat once in a fireplace.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. Oh yeah, smoke it out.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Uh No, I didn't smoke it. I put on a
leather coat over another coat, gloves.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Recycled helmet before you do any like battle with nature.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
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
(25:11):
often composed of millions of bats.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
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
(25:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
This is the fact of the show for me.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
I think you should take it.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
And all the blood would rush to your head too,
and you just pass out. It'd be really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
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,
(26:59):
or to grab that coffee.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
No, their tendons are only connected to the upper body.
No muscle involve whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
So it requires no energy whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right or talons, I guess we should say, right, yeah,
but it requires no energy none whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
And bats will actually like they'll die in that position sometimes.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
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.
(28:22):
That puts bats at a particular disadvantage because they fly
and that requires a ton of energy. Mammals are not
designed to fly. To generate the energy needed to fly,
bats can do it, but to do it, they have
to enter what's called a state of torpor every day. Yeah,
And basically, while they're hanging upside down, they get super
(28:44):
super sleepy, and they get so sleepy that their metabolism
starts to slow, and in their internal temperature falls and
becomes about an equilibrium with the external temperature. So they
go from warm blooded to essentially cold blooded during a
(29:04):
single day.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
There's a lot of different bats and a lot of
different things that bats do.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
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
(30:03):
ghouls and demons make them vilified. Yeah, but bats are
our friends because they eat tons and tons of insects.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Literally tons.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, what was the stat on that there's twelve hundred
mosquitos in an hour one bat?
Speaker 3 (30:19):
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
(30:40):
million bats. It's a colony and every night they eat
two hundred tons.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Of insects two hundred tons.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Have you ever seen a farmer do that to a bat? Yeah,
he's really.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Be pumping round up in one hand and waving at
the fats in the other.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
You'll bring a little two to your eye.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Thank a bat.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Thank a bat.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
And you mentioned that colony in Texas in Austin.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Right, Yeah, under the Congress Avenue Bridge, very famous spot
to In fact, it's a big tourist attraction.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, they've embraced so.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
They're bringing tourist dollars in. Two. They pollinate, they eat
pest bugs, and they bring in the tourists.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah. I think some of them are uber drivers as well.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
This is trying to eke out a living, yep, exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
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
(32:24):
believe they're called, used they collected bat guano to use
his gunpowder yea and explosives.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
They extracted the saltpeter from it.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
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.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
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.
(33:10):
So go read fourteen ninety one or fourteen ninety three,
I can't remember. Talks about this.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
They will know they're man's stalkers.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Much, right, No, unless the cow contracts an infection or
something from it.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
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
(34:04):
anticoagulant in it, so the blood just kind of trickles
out and keeps coming and then the vampire bat flies away.
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.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Even though I love that's a crawling bat with those
wings is a little.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Creepy coming to suck your blood. Yeah, yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
No, it's not sucking blood. Remember it's an anticoagulant, so
it just opens.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Go let's talk about reproduction for a second. They reproduce
typically only once a year.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Oh, bat reproduct.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, oh you thought it just like us.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
I thought you're about to sing salt and pepper.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yeah, they produce one baby a year.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Because they often nurse while the mother's flying around.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, so that'd be like one hundred and twenty pound
woman having a thirty pound baby.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Just attached to her while she's flying exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
No, not even with man right in many cases.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Anyway, it's like an eighth grade dance in there.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
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,
(36:56):
They can delay their fertilization based on the best time
to have a baby bat. Really yeah, So they can
have the sex in the fall and hold that sperm
and release the sperm to meet the eggs like six
months later in the spring. Wow, isn't that amazing. They've
(37:17):
learned to actually control their own cycle.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
They have some serious willpower.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Well, they want to survive, you know. Yeah, they are
ultimate survivors.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
You know, bats have a real problem facing them right now,
Chuck with white nose fungus.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
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,
(38:01):
and when they wake up, they're in big trouble because
an animal that hibernates has just enough energy store to
make it through the hibernation period. If they wake up
and blow a bunch of energy, like bringing their metabolism
and body heat back up to normal levels, and then
try to go back into hibernation, they'll starve to death
before the winner's over.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
That's awful.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Holy cow.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Yeah, and it's a real problem. They don't know how
to stop it.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
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,
(39:12):
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?
Speaker 3 (39:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Well, I mean, and leaving the ones that actually are.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, so they're not even getting the ones that are
spreading the rabies.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Just misinformation.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
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?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
That's a pretty good idea.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
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
(40:34):
they just dropped it.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
What did Eleanor Roosevelt have to do with it?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Well, she was the first lady at the time.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Well, I no, but since when the first ladies not
could like work with education and nutrition, like how about bombats?
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Eleanor Roosevelt definitely was seated at the right hand of
the seat of power. She was a sharp lady. Crazy
yeah bat bombs.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Well, she wasn't that sharp. She thought that was a
good idea.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
I have the impression that she was doing it as
a favor, like getting this guy on trade.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Sure, the army, the war room.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah, yeah, so that's Eleanor Roosevelt. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Nope.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
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?
Speaker 1 (41:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
So cute, very cute. And since I said adorable, it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
All of them are missing time.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
From that one.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
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.
(42:29):
My boyfriend, 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
should know as a result of the topic you chose
for the show, you cost me several nights of kitchen
clean up duty. Before the show, we were grabbing drinks
next door and decided to make things interesting. With little
bet as to what the topic would be. We came
(42:50):
up with six possible categories. We thought it could fall
into biology, geography, history, physics, current events, and.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Political social falling into three of those.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, and we're not going to reveal it here, by
the way, people, because we're touring that same.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Showy at least one more go around with.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
No, they play a different show every night, That's why
they follow them around.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Well, not completely different every.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Night and pretty much different that's impossible. No, I mean,
like they play a different show every night.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Well, they might alter songs, but there's no they don't
have three thousand songs.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
They have a lot of songs.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yeah, maybe they're all like driving around in bands.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yeah, we mix our show up a little bit.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Sure, all right, I think that's a good public announcement though.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Like, yes, what you just did?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (43:55):
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
(44:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Really yeah, Hogen, h A G A.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
N Hagen.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I work with Hagen, all right.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I would say it should be Hagen and if they
got married, he should take her last name and be
Hogen Breitbach.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
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
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
(45:00):
send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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