Ologies with Alie Ward - Chiropterology Part 2 (BATS) with Merlin Tuttle

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

PART 2: The stunning conclusion of a 3-hour gab session about frickin' bats with America's favorite chiropterologist, Dr. Merlin Tuttle. Learn about bat conversations, their close friendships, surprising dongs, where they keep their nipples, how to go bat spotting after the sun sets, more myths and misconceptions about bat danger, perhaps the grossest thing Merlin has ever put in his mouth, how to hang up a bat house for maximum bat party funtimes, the latest on white nose syndrome and how it feels to get slapped by a bat. Once again: Indiana Jones can get bent because Dr. Merlin Tuttle is the hero this nation needs. Learn more about bats & Dr. Merlin Tuttle's photography & work in conservation:www.MerlinTuttle.orgDr. Merlin Tuttle's bat books: www.merlintuttle.org/category/books/Social media links:www.instagram.com/merlintuttlephotowww.twitter.com/merlinsbatswww.facebook.com/MerlinTuttlesBatConservationSponsor links: kiwi.com/ologies; calm.com/ologies; hellofresh.com/ologies9, code: Ologies9; mytruition.com/ologies; More links up at alieward.com/ologies/chiropterologyBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's still your friend's baby who looks like a turtle, Allie Ward, back with a part two episode of oligies. Hey, did you listen to part one of Chiropterology about bats? No? Then what are you doing here? Would you walk into a movie 85 minutes in with only half a bucket of popcorn? No. So go listen to part one.

You're going to hear all about cave tales and bat flim flams and debunkery and what is a bat. Are they similar to primates and what makes them able to sleep upside down and why should we protect them and can you build a huge habitat that they'll come and live in and who makes good bat houses and how can you train one in some real tight spots a chiropterologist can get in. But real quick, thank you to all the folks at patreon.com slash oligies who make it possible and who submit wonderful fun questions every week and also to anyone who rates and subscribes

and keeps oligies up in the charts among the science giants. Thank you so much for that and for telling friends about the show and of course for leaving a review for me to creepily read and choose one each week to thank such as for example, Nicole3496 said, I've been listening to oligies at work and it never gets old. I wish I had more time in the day to listen to every episode. I love the uniqueness of each episode. It will keep you extremely interested in wanting to learn more. P.S. Merlin is my new celebrity crush.

Thanks to the bats episode. Well, thank you, Nicole, on behalf of myself and America's favorite bat expert. So this week, part two, now after a quick potty break for both of us, we concluded part one of this massive three hour bat extravaganza. Took a little break. Merlin just went into his office and grabbed an iPad containing an archive of bat calls. He'd recorded using an ultrasonic microphone and he lent a play by play like Vince Goley of the bat world.

And then we dove back into your Patreon questions. So hang out, open your ears to hear bat conversations about echolocation and how to put up a bat house and more info on white nose syndrome and bat coitus and habitats and his favorite species and what he does in his leisure time. So settle in for the wildlife wizardry of human treasure and America's favorite chiropterologist, Dr. Merlin Tuttle. I mean, it's not every day you get to sit down with the Merlin Tuttle. This is just a very slow down recording, there, that's a call for a free tail bat.

Okay, so that ultrasonic recorder is called the Echo Meter Touch and it's made by Wildlife Acoustics. They're not sponsors, they just make cool gadgets for scientists and friends to animals. And this thing can plug into an iPhone or an iPad, they're between like 200 to 350 bucks depending on how pro of a model you get. And hey, holidays are coming up, how about everyone gives each other bat houses and maybe chips in for tiny ultrasonic microphones and some of Merlin Tuttle's books. Just wing in the new year.

Also, what if you just want to see some bats? Now first time question asker and part time chiropterologist in Alaska, Dave Hanna asked about bat research instruments and I hope that he gets one of these things. Maybe he already has one. So patrons including Iris McPherson, Lisa Butterscotch, Jamie Kishimoto all asked about the best way to spot one and Nicole Bratt asked where can I go to give bats a tender little hug provided they want it. If you want to go bat spotting, if you want to see a bat, what's the best way to do it?

If I want to see a bat, I'm probably going to do one of several things. First of all, I'm going to learn a lesson, learn right here in front of my house. One night I wanted to test this out when I first obtained it and I went downtown and went all over places where I thought there would be bats feeding and I couldn't pick up hardly a bat. They left town and went out to the agricultural areas to feed. When I came home, Paul wanted me to try and see if there any in the yard and I said no, there wouldn't be any out here.

It turns out that in our neighborhood, as in most neighborhoods, most of the street lights are yellow now and don't attract insects, but the one in front of our place is white. I got such good recordings right standing in front of our house that the manufacturer asked to use them for promoting the product. John says that these are social calls. Hi. Hello. Hey.

So they do chit chat a lot. These are just telling them what's right in front of them, but much more detail. And that's a type of sonar? Yeah. With a bat detector, you'd be amazed how many times I can go out and even with a spotlight, can't spot a bat, but I can hear at least one or two right close and I'm like, where the hell are they? First place I'd go looking for a bat if I didn't have a bat detector would be a white

street light or any outdoor powerful white light because they attract insects the best light to eat as opposed to yellow lights that just expose them to more owl predation and don't attract insects. So go crash an insect party, but do not invite any owls. The other thing I do, if there was a river or a lake anywhere and there were boat docks and there were landing lights, white lights on the docks, I would look around those because a lot easier spot bats out over clear open water, flying low over the water than it is up high.

Around street lights, you can find a white street light still and that's hard these days. Sometimes you need to shield your eyes from the absolute center of the lights that doesn't blind you, but then look around and you'll see bats. I used to take people up to the state capitol in the spring time and we'd sit there with a bat detector and listen, there wouldn't be anything for a while and then we'd hear several bats coming into the zone and we'd look up and you'd actually see the wings dropping from the moths that they're eating. Now the wings just drop like Snickers wrappers, right?

Like they don't want those, they just want those that's inside. I didn't realize that about moths until I was helping renovate a kitchen up in Montana and found out that animals don't eat the wings, they just like to eat the squishy part. Right. Yeah, it's like candy wrappers everywhere. So in this case, it was a mice infestation on our family's little teeny tiny prairie house and the mice just, they yum-yum it up with the moths, but yes, they leave the wings around like slobs, nobody wants them.

So there are other ways to see bats too. Watch a cave entrance where they come out at night, I have often even been in a foreign country and just look up and see a woodpecker hole in a tree and wait and watch and see a bat come out. Look who's here. If you're in the tropics, then most places you go like anywhere in the tropics, you'll have various kinds of bananas growing, banana plants. Bats are bat pollinated.

We didn't even get into this whole part of how important bats are at pollinating economically important and ecologically important plants. Yes, patrons such as Sophie Kosano and Laura Kinney who asked, aside from bats chowing down on insects, some bats are important pollinators, right? Gwen Bode simply demanded, what can you tell me about bats as pollinators? I want to know everything. Gwen Bode, here we go. So if you're staying in a resort hotel in the tropics, well, in fact, I've done this

down along the Gulf of California coast in Mexico, some of the, a lot of the resorts will have cardone and organ pipe and sehuro cactus growing right up outside your door or in the parking lot and there'll be lights around and in the right season, bats come and pollinate, they're mostly bat pollinated in bat seed disperse. And I've sat in the back of a hotel room in Mexico and watched bats four feet away coming and pollinating flowers and a lot of places will have bananas, you know, bananas flower over very long periods during the year and you see a banana that has one of the stalks that hang down that eventually develop bananas on them.

P.S. Merlin was like, what, what is the word for a stalk of bananas? Like a stem of them. And I was like, got me, dude, but I'll look it up. So I did. And let me tell you, there were some search returns that are more than you bargained for when you type in banana plus anatomy. Now, at first glance, it seemed like the word we were looking for was just stem or stalk of bananas.

But then I saw that when it's a bunch of flowers, it's called an inflorescence, which sounds like a new Calvin Klein perfume. Also, is now a good time to remind you that a banana is a berry? Are we still reeling from that pumpkin fact in the Cucurbitology episode? We are. Anyway, bats love an inflorescence or a big stalk of flowers to motorboat. After it's sun goes down or starting a little bit before you'll see one of these purple bracts will start opening when it gets open, then the bats come and pollinate them.

Now, there aren't any new world bats that originally depended on bananas for pollination because bananas didn't come from the new world. They came from the old world tropics. But all commercial bananas that we eat today come from bet dependent ancestors. So anywhere in the world, just about, if you go out and you see banana plants growing in a yard, watch those carefully at dusk or a little bit after dusk. And you're very likely to see small nectar feeding bats coming in and visiting them. So bats are important pollinators for another plant.

And I'll gov a clue of what that affects to Keela. It's a gov, the plants of gov. Oh, but if it grows a big stalk of flowers in the middle, that's an inflorescence by Calvin. I mean, even in Austin, I've laughed at myself before. I'm curious. I've never gone out to a really big, fully flowering agave plant in Austin and watched it for a couple hours at night. There might be nectar bats here that we don't know about yet.

Now, are you a night person or are you a morning person? I don't think I'm naturally a night person, but I've certainly had to adapt. What happens when you're out doing nocturnal fieldwork? Do you just have like a thermos of Folgers? Like, what do you, what do you take with you? I have been accused of trying to kill people from starvation and dehydration. I used to go on trips in the caves. My most arduous cave trip took 23 hours.

Oh, no. And in one day, we probably climbed. Six or 700 feet of vertical ropes. And, and on things like that, you've got to carry all these heavy ropes, your climbing gear, your research gear. You don't want to carry anything else you don't have to. So I tend to go really light on food and water. And I have myself been so desperate at the end of one of those long stays

underground that one night I actually got down and drank water out of a puddle. It had bat droppings in it. You lived to tell the tale. Do you get sick? No. Oh, do I need to remind you to never do this? Okay, good. So bring water or emergency water purification tablets or filters.

Listen, you spend literally 50 years in the field and some shit's going to go down, but he survived. Just don't you do it, please. So have you, have you learned a lesson? Did you never let that happen again? No, I don't think anybody knows me would say I fully learned the lesson. Oh, that's like some Indiana Jones stuff right there. Oh my God.

One more thing on bat watching. Another way to see bats, if you're in a, if you go to Caribbean Island to a resort or you're on one of these cruise ships in the tropics, sub tropics of Latin America, you can often see fishing bats with up to three, almost three foot wingspans. Catching minnows under dock lights, catching minnows, fish or bats. They have big hind feet and laterally compressed toes so that they slide through the water with minimum friction. They have very sharp claws and they just dip down and snag the minnow out of the water.

That sounds like a pterodactyl or something. I mean, okay, side note. I look this up and it's impressive as hell to use sonar to scoop up a fish with your feet, well, also your hands or wings. But I did think it was funny that fish or bats were featured on one nat geodocumentary called, I mean, they catch fish. So was the documentary made for fish? Anyway, sounds like another fear monger smear campaign, bunch of bull guano catchment drift.

On the topic of guano, some people asked how you felt about the term batshit crazy. I don't have any particular. Response to it. First of all, I firmly believe that if you're too much in love with a kind of animal, you can't really effectively conserve it. Okay. If you're too much in love with it, you're probably going to go out into combat with everybody that doesn't do what you think they should do.

When I first started trying to save bats, virtually everybody I met hated them and they would often tell me about how they killed large numbers of them. And I had to learn, you can't win battles without allies. That's a good point. And you can't get allies by fighting with everybody that disagrees with you if the majority disagree with you. Welcome to Merlin School of Conflict Resolution Wizardry. Let's role play, shall we?

And so I would simply ask, well, I'm curious, why did you do that? Well, one tried to attack me on it. Oh, really? I'm very interested in attacks, you know, and all my life studying bats, I've never been attacked or seen by it was. So I'm really curious, could you tell me about how this attack occurred? And we usually end up finding out that it was imagined and certainly unproven. Or they say, you know, somebody told me, and I just asked, well, is this person ever

been wrong about anything? And you're like, well, they're my drunk uncle and they're wrong about everything. You just keep asking questions until finally, you know, what would you think of bats? If you understood that, that just one of that species can catch a thousand mosquitoes in an hour or can catch enough potato beetles or cucumber beetles in a summer to protect your garden from all kinds of havoc. You know, I've had people that thought they had a terrible problem with bats and they're attic and I'd come and actually tell them how to get the bats to leave.

But when I'd finished telling them about what bats did and what they were like, they'd say, no, no, no, we don't want to get rid of them now. We're going to keep them. Yeah. What do you do if you have bats in the attic? Is it OK just to leave them up there? I certainly wouldn't advocate allowing bats or any wild animal to come into human living quarters inside, but there's absolutely nothing to worry about from a

bat that wants to live behind your window shutter or lives in the attic and isn't causing, you know, bat droppings too much, too much of anything in the wrong place is not good. One guy put up a bat house over his front door because he wanted to look and see the bats every day. Well, after they got to be hundreds of them in his house and started dropping a half inch iguana, he was calling to know how he could move them. Maybe just consider that before you hang it up.

So where do you put a bat box? A lot of you wanted tips. A lot of you, such as Josie Gombas, Molly Henning, Trisha, Lauren Dean, Lauren Blanchard, Mae Merrill, Robin Keewen, Eva, Jen Henry, Addie Markin, Deborah Diller, M Wing, Sarah Greer, Robert Pulcini, Carolyn Armitage, Liz Powell, Gretchen Haraford, Fernando Derek Allen, Ellie Abbott, Anna Thompson, Jennifer Alvarez, Julie Noble, Hailey Stushnoff, Tristan Kwaisinski, Brandy, Madeleine Runyon, Charlotte Fielkegaard, Sarah Crocker, Amy Sally, Colleeny B, and Kevin List,

who asked, what's the deal with bat houses? Why do they need to be on a standalone pole above a certain height? Or Janet Sebastian Coleman, who asked, how do I befriend the bats? How do I get them to come and hang out in my yard? Or Jessica Schunk, who asked, how can I attract the bats to a bat house after we evicted them from our eaves? Or will they forever tell tales of our lack of hospitality? She sounds guilty as hell.

OK, so I looked it up on MerlinTuttle.org. He has a whole guide about bat boxes, right clickable there on his homepage. Read it and figure out how big of a box would be good for the species in your area and even what color to paint it, depending on your region. So darker bat houses tend to retain heat and are better for colder climates. And ones mounted on a building retain more heat that the bats dig and temperate and warmer climates might be better served with a bat box on a pole. Also, in general, bats aren't crazy about ones mounted on trees

because predators can scramble right up the tree or birds of prey can hang out in a branch and snack on their babies like popcorn shrimp. Also, apparently there's not much evidence that adding bat guano will attract bats faster. So don't deal with that shit. And if you have an empty bat house that just isn't getting a lot of action, it might be because it needs seven hours of direct daily sun. So it might need to be moved. Anyway, go to MerlinTuttle.org, figure it out and then just breathe easy.

He writes, if you know you have a good bat house mounted in a good location, be patient, the bats will likely arrive eventually. As long as the bats are on the outside, the house you're on the inside, I think that's perfectly fine. And the old pest control operators are trying to make a lot of money scaring people would tell you that they bred like rabbits that they once got their scent established, you'd never get rid of them and all that kind of thing, but not true. OK, remember, bat breeding goes a little slow and many of them have only one pop

at a time, unlike a soft, squirmy pile of rabbit babies. So flim flam debunked. Also, it didn't strike me until later that I totally forgot to ask Merlin about bat genies, what's happening in a chiropterology crotch. So Cassiana Brooke wanted to know, do bats have penises? How do they procreate? Well, I looked it up and they do have sexual intercourse with their penises and vaginas, they are mammals.

Also, bat dicks sometimes have keratinized spines on them that may serve like a barbeque brush just to get out of their bats sperm. Since, as we mentioned briefly last week, bats love an orgy. Now, Sam F said, I have recently read articles about fruit bats performing fellatio and conolingus. Can you tell me more? Julie Berry put it more plainly. Truth or flim flam, bats engage in oral sex. Derek Allen, friend to bats, chimed in on the Patreon questions and said,

I have seen this happen when I was a zoo volunteer. Both fellatio and conolingus have been observed. So, yep, bats will get down and they will go down. That is a fact. Now, Tay Solis left the Patreon plea, please talk about homosexuality in bats. We deserve gay bat talk. Tay, I looked it up, insurers, heck yeah, bats are gay. Bats will bone when everyone's awake.

They'll also bone each other while one is taking a snooze, which is reprehensible in human mammals. Researchers tasked with quantifying bat sex say up to 35% of the sleepy sex is just man on man bat action. What about ladybats? Can we talk about the bat boobs? Sure can. Their bat boobs are sometimes located in their armpits so that their one to two

babies can just latch on, bite a nip and go zoom in through the sky. Now, side note, if you Google bat nipples, the first 10,000 or so returns are about George Clooney's beleaguered, benippled bat suit, which Batman director Joel Schumacher later explained that he had told the lead customer of the film. Let's make it anatomical. And then he gave photos of those Greek statues. The customer did the nipples and he says, when I looked at them, I thought, that's cool.

You know what would have been cooler? Armpit nipples and maybe a same sex romantic subplot. Let's spice up these franchises, people. Now, this next question asked by not Clooney. George was echoed by Brian Wharton and Austinite. Let's see, George for our wants to know how did different types of bats evolve to have such varying food sources like fruit bats, having fruit, vampire bats, blood. I was thinking it was like birds having different beak types, but fruit and blood

are not the same in any way. So, hmm. Well, there are a lot of these things that we can't know absolutely. We can only speculate based on what we see today. But one that's particularly interested me, you go to my website, Photo Gallery, you'll see pictures of bats pollinating cacti. And one of them is some of those pictures are pallid bats, pollinating cardone cactus, the world's largest cactus.

It gets up to 50, 60 feet tall. And this is a bat that predominantly was thought for most of my career to eat only insects, scorpions, and centipedes. Then one night I'm out trying to catch a nectar-feeding bat to put in my studio. And I watch a bat come in and obviously stick its head in the flower. It comes out with its head covered in pollen, gets caught in my net. And it turns out to be a pallid bat. Not the nectar bat that we thought should have been there pollinating the plant.

And later it's been well documented that pallid bats are major flower pollinators. Probably how this all started was pallid bats love to eat things like Sphinx moths that come to those same flowers. So a pallid bat coming to a cardone cactus maybe just as likely to grab a Sphinx moth or as it is to grab a drink. Can I give you a nightcap? So they're kind of like omnivorous a bit. Sure.

They're bats that are quite omnivorous. Now, what about fuzzy blood guzzlers? Are they low key monster creeps or are they just like your friends on the keto diet? But very hairy with wing hands. Yeah, you can imagine that, you know, even vampires. A little harder to figure out. But, you know, they they may have been attracted, you know, when you had these giant animals jabbing each other with tusks and things,

there were probably some fair open ones and they probably attracted insects. And bats may have come to catch those insects and then found out that the blood tasted good and before anybody wrinkles up because bats eat blood. Let me point out that it's only been relatively recent years that hasn't been popular with humans. Yeah, I mean, as you know, we're in Texas right now. There's a lot of people eating steak today. I'm sure that is eating blood.

So yeah, well, blood sausage, you know, still probably pretty popular in some parts of the world. Oh, for sure. Now, of course, vampire bats were on the brains of many of you, including Caleb Patton, Jodie Rieck, No Fun Nicole, Radley, Meg Mahali, Dane Goading, Hayden Sloan and first time question asker, Kira Dai. Do you think that the vampire bats are maybe where vampires got the lore of being associated with vampires, Transylvania types? What's interesting is that the whole vampire legend occurred before anybody knew

of a vampire bat. There are independent vampire legends in many parts of the world, from Europe to the Pacific Islands. There was this whole idea of vampires and drinking blood long before they found a bat that did it. Seriously? And the earliest vampire stories were people that were vampires. And in fact, people did, even in Europe, do really despicable things, not even 200 years ago. There were

major generals and people who, after battle, would impale enemies by sticking them a sword handle up through their body and leaving them alive, dangling on it. People who would fill a tub with human blood and bathe in it. There are all kinds of crazy things, horrible things done by people involving blood. But when we finally discovered a bat that ate blood, like we still many of us do, all of a sudden we'd found the despicable, terrible, nasty thing.

You know what's not despicable? Sharing a meal. Now, since it's hard to sneak up on bird butts and mammal nipples to slice and lap up the blood, sometimes vampire bats will get hungry if they don't feed for a day or two. So their friends will know that and they'll just barf up blood for them to share. Is there anything more goth and selfless than that? It's just like offering your neighbor hot dog, except you have eaten it first. Not to mention the vampire finch.

No one's out there worrying about finches. Go to my website, go to the photo gallery and look under vampires. And you'll find that at least one species of vampires is one of the cutest animals around. The bat is cute. Merlin got up to get this beautiful little full color pamphlet. Smaller than a deck of cards, slim as a credit card. He hands them out to strangers to spread the bat facts like how invaluable bats are as pollinators, that they can live up to 40 years, that they save farmers

up to $23 billion a year in pest control, that a bat can catch up to a thousand insects an hour, that 1.5 million live in Austin, that they form long term friendships that may involve blood vomit. So many great facts on this pamphlet, except for the blood vomit part. But the front of the pamphlet has a squish faced bat. It looks like a very hairy, tiny, French bulldog. That's a cute vampire. Oh, it's so cute.

Look at its little nose. Oh, it's so cute. Oh, that's a vampire bat? Yeah. I'd let him take a nibble. OK, now on to the sweet, difficult question of picking a favorite species. A thing wondered about by patrons Crystal Mendoza, Ruby Ostrich, Iris McPherson, Kathleen Sachs and Jay, who asked, what's the best bat and why is it the flying fox? Not so fast, Jay.

So many people asked if you have a favorite species of bat. Is that so hard to ask? It's virtually impossible for me to pick a favorite. You know, it would tend to be the ones I worked with most recently. I used to think my favorites were the larger carnivores. Then I found out that these tiny little bats smaller than a nickel. Are so intelligent, they can start training me. It's hard not to fall in love with them.

Merlin says that an unfortunate part of conservation means preserving some individual specimens to keep in collections for future ecologists. And he says it's in the name of learning as much as possible about each species to keep millions of them safe. Now, one thing that's a real threat to bats that we don't talk about often is wind turbines. Now, a few of you, Samantha Mitz and Derek Allen asked about how dangerous harnessing wind energy is. And Merlin has an article on his website about all of this.

But the long and short of it is that, sadly, wind power kills tons of bats from collisions and from a drop in air pressure that affects their oxygen levels and their lungs and can kill them instantly. Now, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bats die just in the US each year. And the estimates are likely way lower than the reality since so many scavengers will just gobble up the dead bats before they're found and counted. So what can stop all of these bats dying? Things that can stop it involve raising the wind speed threshold for when the

turbine starts rotating. So waiting till it gets a little bit windier to have them start going around. That could save 77% of some species killed with only a 1% decline in energy output or perhaps adding an annoying ultrasonic deterrent kind of a loud noise that they just hate, kind of like when bars play the semi sonic hit closing time at intolerable volumes at 1.55 AM. Now, Merlin says that until the wind folks and the bat folks figured out, we can each try individually just to use less electricity.

Just turn out the lights for the bats. The goal is to save as much of healthy nature on this planet as we can. And it's not to quibble about every little thing that goes wrong. Yeah, the bigger picture for sure. OK, let's return to the topic of cuteness. A listener named George wants to know, is it true that they drink by licking water off their bellies? Flying foxes do drink by

kind of belly flopping into river water. And when they come up, there's a bunch of water clings to their fur and they drink that. Oh, it's just like dunking your hair in the sink and then sucking as you go about your day. Tons of you had the foresight to submit questions about bad eyes, such as Gracie and Gretchen and a few others ask if there's any truth to the saying blind is a bat and does bat vision vary from species to species? How, how, what's the range of eyesight for bats?

It varies from species to species, but I don't know of any bat that doesn't probably see fairly well. There are bats that have very small eyes and we wonder how well they see. But most bats that have been tested certainly see fine. Oh, I didn't know that. In fact, some even see color. What's cool, though, is that using sound alone,

bats can see everything we see except perhaps in some cases color. But they can also see things we can't see because by looking at this table, you do not know if that's foam rubber painted over or if that's hard wood. The bat would know. And how is that echolocation working? Is it similar to whales? Some listeners want to know. Patrons, Helena, Dave Woodruff, curious DNA.

Y'all wanted to hear about echolocation and sonar. Yeah, it's been estimated by the Don Griffin, the guy who discovered bat echolocation, he estimated that it was on a watt per watt ounce per ounce basis, billions of times more efficient than anything ever developed by humans. Oh my gosh. Have you heard of there are a few people who are not cited, who are blind, who use echolocation themselves to avoid obstacles?

Have you heard about that? Oh, bats have been model. They've been used as models for developing aids for the blind to navigate. In fact, the military is using bat models now to try to develop artificial bats that fly into enemy territory to spy on the enemy. Like little tiny baby drones. Yeah. Just little ones. Now, a few people wanted to know about citizen and community science programs

like Elizabeth Illian, Claire Simpson, and Jeanine Williams, who asked a bit too humbly, what is the best thing us plebs can do to support bat conservation? Also, I had to look up plebs because I was like, is it plebs or plebs? Apparently it's plebs. Now, one thing this podcast episode is doing is tossing some money toward MerlinTuttle.org every week. We donate to a foundation of theologist choosing, and this one was very easy. MerlinTuttle has been working for 50 years to help in bat conservation.

And MerlinTuttle.org is an amazing resource. So a donation for last week's episode. And this week's episode will go to MerlinTuttle.org. And there are sponsors who make those donations possible. So you may be hearing a few words about them. OK, back to your questions about community science programs. And Jeanine Williams and some others wanted to know what's the best thing that community citizen scientists can do to support bat conservation?

The first thing you do is help your neighbors and friends get over unfounded fears of bats. The fear is the mighty killer. The single most prevalent reason that I have seen worldwide for destroying large numbers of bats is fear. I've got pictures of piles of bat bones in a cave in Mexico that where the owner had sealed it shut with hundreds of thousands inside. I have been at places where millions were burned in caves by just putting old car tires in the entrance and doused in a kerosene lined on fire.

I was told by colleagues that there's this beautiful bat cave in this place. I should go there if I went to Kenya. I went there and it all been bulldozed over. And the owner said, well, you know, I built a house just a quarter mile away. And everybody told me that if that if I didn't get rid of those bats, they would move from the cave into my house. Those bats would never cared a bit about his house. It stayed right in the cave.

But people, you know, just in the last couple of years, it's even been on on National Public Radio that bats are arguably among the most dangerous animals on our planet. In an NPR story that's probably still there and can be looked up. They report this is almost a direct quote. When bats are flying overhead, beware that poop that falls on your shoulder may be Ebola. And not long after that aired, I was down at the Congress Avenue Bridge.

A gal saw me and realized that I probably knew something about bats. And she was very concerned there with her husband and said, can you tell me am I safe? Can a bat poop on me here? And I knew she'd been listening to NPR radio. And these wild stories linking bats to every kind of conceivable, dangerous thing. It gets back, in my opinion. Well, it starts with the fact that rabies treatment is so lucrative.

Right. I mean, just look at the difference of treating a dog and a human. Right. I mean, talk about lucrative. So Merlin has a blog post about it. And he says he usually loves NPR, but was deeply, deeply disappointed by this. And of course, once again, do you have a job or pastime that involves encounters or permanent handling of wildlife?

Not a bat idea. To get a rabies vaccine. We did cover rabies stats, which are much lower than public perception in part one. But these patrons asked about rabies and rabies vaccines. Paul D. Simmons, Margaret Abaker-Rini, Emily Martinez, D.B. Nervison Brandy, Mandy Bender, Mads Clement, Caitlyn O'Connell, Eric Pahanka, Sarah Greer, Don A. Walds, Alyssa Waring, Chris Brewer and Lauren Eggart Crow. And I will repeat the disclaimer from part one.

Dr. Merlin, title reminds us he and other bat researchers like vets, they have received pre-exposure vaccination against rabies that protects against defensive bites from animals that they might handle who are unfamiliar. Now, unprotected people bitten by any animal should seek advice regarding a possible need to be vaccinated or have the animal tested for rabies. But Catherine Stacey asked, can the bats get the vaccine? Is there a bait laced with rabies vaccine for bats like what's used for other wildlife such as foxes and raccoons?

What's going on with that? As someone asked about giving bat vaccines like they might do with other wildlife, if vaccinating bats for rabies is even a thing that's worth looking into. I was part of a panel discussion and they actually have a paper, I believe, impressed now in which that is discussed. I happen to be one of there are several authors. I'm one that says I don't think it's worth it. OK, this next sunny or perhaps not so sunny question was asked by Leanne Schuster,

Azzam and Amelia Hines. And and a lot of well on that topic, a lot of listeners had the question, if you see a bat during the day, is that a bad sign? None necessarily depends on where the bat is. If the bats hanging in a normal position where that species lives. I mean, you know, I have plenty of times walked under a tree and I know what kind of leaves bats that

live under leaves like to hang on and I'll look up and oh, there's a bat. Well, that bats doing he's perfectly normal. That's not a problem. If the bat is out on the ground or out where a bird could easily catch it in the daytime, then that bat is almost certainly sick. Now, that doesn't mean he's rabid. Ninety five percent of such bats aren't rabid. But five percent are.

Most of the statistics you hear about rabies and bats come from they're taken from the health department only gets suspect bats submitted. If the bats not acting abnormally, it doesn't get submitted. So this is like deciding what proportion of Americans have cancer based on checking cancer clinics. See how that works? Now, the next question was asked by a lot of you and I mean approximately one million. So I will say your names with my mouth very fast.

This is a white hot topic. It was right under our noses. Now, even though Merlin's a fun guy, I had to ask him this tiny pommar. White Nose Syndrome, asked about by Ruby Ostrich, first time question asker. Jesse E. Spencer, Emily Jean, Alicia Geiland, Margaret Matera, Bronwyn Tram McDonald, BNK Boys Quentin, McKenna Larson, Jennifer Downey, Liv Schaefer, Samantha Bold, Pandora 2, Hannah M. Childers, Acacia Sprague, Lauren Harder, Sarah Luchessy, Cassie Flint, Leah Wilbur, Anna Thompson,

JCW, Adam Weaver, Tangynette, Mandy Binder, Caitlyn Fitzgerald, Rhonda Grizzle, Madeline Rogers, who says, where is White Nose Syndrome the worst and what species does it affect the most and how bad is it? What can we do? What's going on with White Nose? And now when it comes to White Nose, what can be done to help them? The most important thing that could be done now to help bats that have populations that have crashed because of White Nose Syndrome is to help protect and restore more roosting habitat, more habitat in general,

but particularly roosting habitat. And now roosting habitat, that's the overnight sleepy time? Mostly where they hibernate. Oh, well, that was the next question. Do they eat in winter? Do they hibernate? The bats that have been hardest hit by White Nose Syndrome are bats that hibernate in caves all winter. There's very little food in a temperate zone from from,

you know, you might get get away with staying active in the winter here, but you go a little bit north of here and throughout most of the United States and Canada, there are no insects available to eat at night. So you have to either migrate south for the winter or hibernate in a cave. And the biggest losses of all time have occurred when their hibernate in caves were destroyed and are disturbed. And here's the problem. Years ago, I naively would say to cavers,

what's the problem with saving less than one percent of caves for bats? It leaves all the rest for you. Well, it's not quite that way. We humans want the same caves that the bats want. So we're competing for the one percent that that have gigantic entrances, huge passages, multiple complexity. Those are the first ones that we humans want. And so many huge numbers of our U.S.

bats were lost before anybody even reported that they were present. Is there anything that can be done to medicate them at all? Or to medicate? Yeah, can you give them antifungal? No, no, OK. I'm absolutely adamant about that. I believe that more harm is being done than help in trying to find a cure for whiteness syndrome.

It's more just trying to recover the populations. Since since this began, there have been cures found. I mean, I remember a rehabber that just mixed dilute vinegar and water mixture and could cure whiteness syndrome. But when they banned it, all those bats are at least the back of the wild, they got infected again and died. So curing because you find something will kill the fungus is not a cure that

keeps you from getting reinfected. And even if you found something that would prevent reinfection, imagine trying to treat all the bats or the locations. There must be billions of locations infected with that fungus now. I mean, just Mammoth Cave alone that used to house many millions of bats has more than 400 miles of passages. Imagine treating all those with something that's going to kill this fungus. And then understand that this fungus is only one of thousands of kinds of fungi.

And if you found something that would kill it, you might cause a horrible problem, chain reaction, destroying whole ecosystems that we don't even know much about. Is the best course of action to let it run its course and make sure that they have enough places to roost and just repopulate? If you go to my website again and look under resources under White Nose Syndrome, I did a thorough investigation a few months ago of what has happened, where it has passed over the last decade.

And we're seeing clear signs of recovery. Genetically resistant bats are apparently recovering. OK, OK, that's promising. That's the good news. And so it's wonderful that we have Merlin going to bat for these critters. I hate myself. I did find evidence that it's very interesting. There are there are colonies that have fully recovered,

that dropped by at least 80 percent when it passed, that are now fully recovered. The ones I'm thinking about, many of them have been banded by researchers. And when they look for them, they never find them in hibernation. This means that those survivors are doing so well, haven't had to put up with humans trying to save them. Oh, really? Let me point out that before White Nose Syndrome was a problem.

I mean, I founded the first two endangered species recovery teams for bats in America. And we were adamant that nobody would go in and disturb bats during hibernation more than once every two years, even to census for the government to tell how they're doing in retrospect. Now, I think we should have made that every three to five years. Because every I have again on my website, published resources about the cost of hibernation disturbance.

When you go into a cave and force about to wake up out of hibernation in the winter time, he burns up on average 30 to 60 days worth of stored fat reserve. This fungus is killing bats because it makes them, you know, like if you've ever had chiggers or poison ivy, you don't sleep well at night, you wake up scratching. Well, that's what's happened to the bats. They're waking up out of hibernation and it's very costly. And that's why they're coming out before spring. They're desperate, they're starving, and that's why they're dying.

Well, imagine once white nose syndrome came along, there were some places where researchers were going in there a half a dozen times or more in winter and sometimes spending hours. Oh, wow. And they're even more tired. That would have been enough to knock the population that cave out without any fungal problem. So let those snoozy little flupy faced fuzz puppets sleep, people. Get out of their beautiful vulvinosis. Let them catch some seas.

Evolution is going to play its course. Yeah, that makes sense. And I don't know of any evidence yet that any species is going to go extinct because of this. All the ones I know of that where it's passed by far enough will go to have an idea seem to be hanging on, I won't call it thriving, but hanging on and showing signs now of recovery. So if you're worried about about the bats, don't don't lose all your sleep over just white nose. White nose is only affecting

right now less than a dozen species out of 40 some species in the US. They don't all have to hibernate in caves. Some species are actually probably benefiting because you don't have to compete with the ones who are dying from white nose syndrome. And I'm not going to say that's beneficial. Overall, it the good side may be that we have suddenly become much more aware of bats and how harmful it could be to lose them and more people have learned about bats and care because of white nose syndrome.

But I do believe all the colonies that have been best monitored that I know of are starting to recover. That's good. And I'm very optimistic. One thing that I'm very concerned about is working with sport cavers who often discover old roosting sites in caves that nobody else knows about. During this time, government agencies have blanket told the cavers often times they just couldn't go caving and actually made enemies out of former allies.

And we need those cavers out there telling us where where the places are that we need to protect. And often they're very happy to do it for us. If we just cooperate with them instead of just saying you can't go caving anymore. Yeah, it's to try to get them invested in it as well. Merlin Tuttle, National Treasure, Skilled Diplomat. Now on MerlinTuttle.org, you can find a 15 minute video titled The Power of Winning Friends and Not Battles.

Merlin Tuttle's Conservation Philosophy. I love him. Have you mentioned he's an American hero? OK, so it's dark and mysterious in caves. And how do cavers tell if there have been past bat parties? They stain the limestone. And you can tell by the contours and the stain on the limestone, you can actually estimate roughly how many bats lived there in the past.

And there are plenty of those places where bats could be restored, even millions. And I personally have seen. At least at least multi millions restored where there were none. Oh, wow. Not multi millions in one cave. But like in one Tennessee cave, it was down to sixty five gray bats. And now it's up to a quarter of a million. There are many encouraging instances where we can see that we are

reestablishing hundreds of thousands of bats. It's not all about millions dying. There are things that we can do to restore habitat. We can put up bat houses in our backyards. And we should be very concerned about caves that can be restored. Years ago, when everybody was scared death of rabies, commercial cave owners and they don't like to call themselves commercial cave owners, they used to not want any bats in their caves because people are so

frightened and freaked out by them. But we have a cave right here in North Austin now. It's a commercialized tour cave. And it's got quite a few hibernating bats in it that have learned to ignore people because it's very well protected and nobody ever harms them. And people walk right by within two meters of those bats. And the bats don't even pay any attention. And, you know, the bats are very good at adapting to us.

If we'll only adapt to get along with them. Right. And despite all this stuff about how bats are supposed to be such dangerous disease carriers, let me point out that they have one of the world's finest track records. I don't know if any animal has a finer track record than bats living in close association with people without causing human sickness. Right. And they're in it's so cool to think that they might be all around us and we just

don't get a chance to necessarily see them. And Ryan and Jasmine want to know what material is closest to that of bat wings? Like, how can you make a bat suit? I have seen comparisons in terms of strength where I think there's actually a medical doctor that wrote this said that the average bat wing was 19 times sturdier than a surgeon's glove. Oh, my gosh. That's the best statistic I can come up with on wings.

Pretty solid stats. So I looked into it and there's skin that stretches like a living drum between those gorgeous freakishly long fashion model fingers. That's called a potassium or potassium plural. And it's two thin layers of skin with a last dent between it. Also, listener Nofun Nicole says she got slapped once in the face by one and it felt leathery. And I don't know why she calls herself Nofun Nicole because that's a top notch

story, boy, howdy, she's fine. So moving on to things that are not excellent. What is something about bats or about your job that you really don't like? What sucks about being a chiropterologist? I don't like. Yeah. What's the worst part about your job? The thing that you're like, oh, this.

The worst part is just I have founded more than one conservation organization and spent most of my life devoted to that. And the worst part for me is day to day wanting to be sure that I find the financial resources to keep those good people that follow me and want to help. It's financially healthy and their family is OK. It isn't easy even now to raise money for bats.

People and organizations will line up and compete with each other to protect cute things like pandas. Right. And the crazy thing is there's nothing uncute about bats. It's just the belief. Here's another one of our crazies about humans. You know, we perceive anything the bigger the eyes are more beautiful. You don't want a very big nose.

You don't want to be very heavy set. OK. OK. Quick aside, for more dirt on incredibly screwed up beauty standards, listen to the two part collology episode with psychologists, Dr. Vinay and Gil. We did not discuss pandas in it, but it is otherwise very juicy and life changing. What animal by those tokens should we dislike the most? The panda.

Elephants. Elephants. OK, I was going to say the panda is a little rich. Everybody loves elephants. Anyone know another interesting statistic? More humans are killed annually in the United States by elephants than by bats. By the by, I looked up most deadly animals to humans and the top two are mosquitoes and humans. Bats are like, don't look at me, man.

I'm eating the mosquitoes that are killing you. And I've never been caught up in a life insurance scandal. That's on y'all. It just shows how rare it is for anybody to be killed by a bat. I think what you will do for bats is what people did for whales in the seventies and elephants. I think that I think that your work alone may bring bats into human consciousness where they're not just an October decal or decoration, you know.

Well, you know, that's that's one of my primary purposes in being a photographer. Until I learned to take pictures of bats as they really are, you could almost never see a picture of bat that wasn't snarling in self defense. You take a little bat whose head is no bigger than my thumb, provoke him, he thinks you're about to eat him. You take a picture, blow it up to page size. Looks like a saber tooth tiger on the attack. Who in the world wouldn't be afraid of this critter?

And what kind of speeds do you have to use? What kind of camera, what kind of speeds and lenses do you have to use to get these gorgeous pictures? You don't have to take everything that fast. But now I take almost all my pictures, at least if they're flash pictures, they're taken at about a 40,000th of a second. Wow, they're gorgeous. Well, the pictures have been a major, major part of the public turnaround

when it comes to bats. Seeing is believing, hearing is not quite there. And now the best part of your job, your favorite thing about bats, your favorite thing about your job. Anybody that associates with me would tell you loud and clear that I'm a bat photography addict. I love getting great pictures that nobody else has thought of getting. And I will sit out for

seemingly endlessly waiting for something to happen. And usually it's for the purpose of promoting conservation. Everybody knows I'll spend 10 times more time trying to get a good shot of a bat catching an insect that costs billions of dollars in crop losses as an insect. It's just pretty or ugly or something. But people ask me what I do in my leisure time. I study bats and photograph bats for vacation time. I've had a lifelong vacation.

That is the best. And one of my favorite things is developing, perfecting my ability to change attitudes for the better for the environment. And that over time takes a lot of skill. Yeah, you learn to ask questions rather than debating people who've done things you disagree with. I think you would have been a great politician, but I'm glad that you helped the bats instead.

Probably more productive. I didn't really say that. This has been just years in the making and quite possibly my favorite conversation I've ever had. Thank you so much for letting me come to your place. You're roost here. Well, you're very welcome. And just know that we didn't even cover a tenth of what should have been talked about about bats. So if you get a big encore, come on back.

You'll be welcome. You did a great job. Thank you, Dr. Tuttle. That's amazing. So there you have it. Shamelessly ask the sharpest minds the dopiest questions because that is how they learned and people who love things want to share those things. Now, of course, follow Merlin Tuttle on all social platforms. He and his social media right hand, Teresa Nikta, are both amazing.

He is on Twitter at Merlin's Bats, Instagram at Merlin Tuttle Photo, on Facebook at Merlin Tuttle Bat Conservation. And of course, MerlinTuttle.org has all those links. That website is an incredible resource for photos of bats and articles and blog posts from Merlin and future trips in the field with him. So check that out. The worst thing about his work and he has drank out of cave puddles is making sure it's all funded. So of course, a second donation went to his organization for this

episode to support. You can go to MerlinTuttle.org. Now, links for this episode are up at alleywar.com slash allergies slash chiropterology and there are links in the show notes. There are also shirts and hats and totes and allergies merch available at alleywar.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for managing that. And also check out their comedy podcast. You are that I spilled my guts on their October 28th Halloween episode. So get all up in that.

Thank you to admins of the allergies podcast Facebook group. Erin Talbert and Hina Lipo. Thank you to all the allergies transcribers helmed by Emily White. Transcripts and bleeped episodes are at alleywar.com slash allergies dash extras. There's a link in the show notes. Happy birthday to Gizmolejst Simonejec, just one of my favorite people. Thanks for existing. Thank you to Assistant Editor Jared Slipper of the Mental Health Podcast,

My Good Bad Brain and the Mustachioed Bat, which I believe is a species of bat. Stephen Ray Morris of the Perkast, Cat Pod and the Dino Pod C Jurassic Wright, who edits all these pieces together each week. And if you listen all the way to the end, you know, I tell you a secret each week. And this week, the secret is that I am recording these asides from a hotel room in Austin. I'm here shooting for CBS and pretty sad because I don't think I'm going to get to see Merlin again while I'm here, but hopefully I'll be back in Austin soon.

Austin, you're a great town. What's up with that? Why are you so good? This pretty people are nice. Food is good. It's got a bunch of antique malls. Also, one more secret. I had fud today and it was very onion heavy.

And I feel like my hands still smell like onions. And I can't figure that out because I didn't eat the soup with my hands. And I've washed my hands several times. So I'm just alone smelling like onions. And I hampton in in Texas. Googling bat dicks. This is the life I chose and I love it. OK, next week.

I'm not going to tell you what the episode is, but I'm very stoked about it. OK, bye bye. Hackadermatology, homiology, cryptozoology, letology, technology, meteorology, methodology, pathology, seriology, and letology. Look at it.

It's freaking bats.