Science Friday - Science And The Election, Disinformation, Vampire Bats. Oct 30, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Choosing the next U.S. president is not the only decision voters will make in the upcoming 2020 elections. Major science policies are also on the ballot. In some states, people will be casting votes on propositions that influence scientific research and the environment. While in other local elections, candidates with scientific backgrounds are in the running for public office. Jeffrey Mervis of Science Magazine talks about California stem cell research policies and Nevada renewable energy propositions, and how a science platform could help or harm candidates. Plus, this election season has been filled with disinformation—unverified stories of voter fraud, rumors of uncounted and tossed out mail-in ballots, claims of third parties hacking voter results, and other false information. And with possible delayed election results due to the overwhelming number of absentee ballots, driven in part by COVID, there could be even more of this disinformation spread before the final polls are announced. Disinformation expert Deen Freelon discusses how these unverified and fake news stories take hold. Freelon also provides techniques on how to decipher fact from fiction in your overfilled news feeds. Relatedly, the November election will likely have big consequences for climate policy in the United States. It comes at a critical time. Scientists say major action is needed by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of global warming. President Donald Trump does not have a climate policy. His administration has rolled back Obama-era climate initiatives. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is promising to put the country on a path toward a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions from the U.S. no later than 2050. Polls show about 70% of Pennsylvanians want their state lawmakers to do more to address climate change. But polls rarely carry examples of what actions people want. A recent StateImpact survey shows Pennsylvanians want a lot — from state and federal lawmakers. The one-question survey attracted responses from more than 200 people, who asked for everything from specific policy proposals such as Pennsylvania’s entrance into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the Green New Deal, to desperate pleas such as “listen to science!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (Read the full piece at ScienceFriday.com.) And it’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to get a little spooky. A perfect time for the newest installment of our Charismatic Creature Corner! This month, we’re diving into the wild world of vampire bats. These little mammals are native to Central and South America, and have bodies about the size of a mouse.  And yes, let’s address the elephant in the room: Vampire bats have a diet that consists entirely of blood. They gravitate toward livestock, but have been known to feed on people too. Their status as blood-suckers makes them one of the only mammals classified as parasites. Despite their gruesome diets, vampire bats are extremely social creatures, and are known to display acts of friendships with other bats. In fact, a study last year found that vampire bat friendships forged in captivity actually last when the bats are released into the wild. Friendships are important for vampire bats: They result in food sharing, which is integral to keeping everyone fed and happy. Science Friday’s Charismatic Creature Correspondent, producer Kathleen Davis, is back to convince Ira that this creature is worthy of entry into the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame. Joining them is Dan Riskin, an evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor of biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.           Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, we'll talk about science issues on the ballot around the country. But first, the pandemic continues to escalate, with cases rising in most states, and a new nationwide record for daily cases, nearly 90,000 for the first time ever yesterday. And as the virus spreads, a worrisome study of antibodies and people recovering from infection, suggesting that the protective antibodies, our immune system generates may disappear in as few as three months, but as is often the case with the immune system, it may be more complicated than that. So here to explain more is Yasmin Tayeg, senior editor for One Zero and a writer for the Medium Coronavirus blog. Welcome back, Yasmin. Hi, Ayretz. Good to be here. Nice to have you. Sort of a double whammy of bad news. That would be bad if our antibodies declined quicker than we had hoped for, right?

It would be bad, but I'm choosing to view the new antibody study with a very hefty grain of salt. This was the React study that came out from England, from scientists at Imperial College London. And it showed that the proportion of people who tested positive for antibodies dropped by almost 27% between June and September. And it was a big study. It was about 365,000 people. One of the major concerns about this study is that it didn't really consider. for the way antibodies are made in the body. Antibodies come in two waves. First, there's the big spike that comes after infection, and that lasts for a few weeks. And then there's a second wave,

and this comes weeks, maybe months after the first wave. And this wave is led by cells called plasma cells that make fewer but much stronger antibodies. So there aren't as many antibodies produced during this phase, which is why if you, you know, look at a chart over time, there's far fewer. But the plasma cells that make them last a lot longer, even up to decades. So the concern is that the React study was catching that first dip in antibody production, which is expected. And there's no real way of telling. So you're basically saying this is not settled science yet. It is not settled science yet, like so much with the coronavirus. Yeah. And there's a lot left we need to learn about just what antibodies even mean for immunity, because, you know, it's tempting

always to associate having antibodies with immunity, but that's not necessarily the case. We don't know that yet. All right. Let's move on to something really out of this world. We're pretty sure there was water in the form of ice on the moon. And new research says, yes. and in more places than we expected? What's going on there? Yeah, you know, there's water on the moon. That was the big headline this week, but we actually already knew that.

The bigger news is that we have a better sense of where that water is on the moon and how it's stored on the moon. One of those papers shows that there's water in the sunlit parts of the moon, which is surprising because for a long time, we thought that water on the moon would be confined to the permanently

shadowy areas like craters or the poles. But apparently not so. There is water on the sunlit side and it's housed in these tiny glass beads, which makes them stable in the sunlight. And there isn't that much of it. There's about a water bottle's worth scattered over a cubic meter of soil that itself is scattered over this 230 square kilometer expanse that the same. scientists looked at, but it's there, and there also could be more. Yeah, do we know little glass beads? Do we know how you get water into a little glass bead? That's one of the big mysteries of this finding. Nobody's really sure how the water got into these glass beads, but there's some theories that it either came on a meteorite fully formed, or that when the meteorite crashed into the moon,

they formed somehow. But we really don't know. That's the new. big question to answer. I got to move on to something. I got to say there's no easy way to introduce this one. Tell us about the super daddies. Oh yes, the super daddies. These are male animals,

goats, pigs, and cows that are modified so that their testicles don't produce that animal's original sperm, but sperm from a male with better and more productive genes. So they're also known as surrogate sires. and the scientists at Washington State

were recently able to make these superdaddies for the first time using the gene editing tool, CRISPR. The big breakthrough is that they were able to use CRISPR to make males sterile. And making Superdadi's is a two-step process. First, you need sterile males, and then you inject stem cells with the beneficial genes into their testicles.

When you say Superdadi, does that mean that they're more offspring or what? What makes a definition of a super daddy? Well, what makes these daddies so super is that they could help improve the genetics of livestock around the world. So in many parts of the world, especially the developing world, livestock just isn't as productive. If you could introduce genes for more meat and milk and eggs into those populations, then it could be a huge benefit for the farmers that rely on them. Wow, that is a nice way to round up. your news today after we started that with such disheartening news, something hopeful. Thank you

for taking time to be with us today, Yasmin. I'm so happy to be here. Jasmine Tayyag, senior editor for One Zero and a writer for the Medium Coronavirus blog. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Like in all election seasons, Pennsylvania is an important swing state for a presidential candidate to court. And there's one word that keeps circulating in conversations about Pennsylvania, fracking. During last week's debate, President Donald Trump framed his opponent, Vice President Joe Biden,

as an enemy to the fracking industry. Biden does support fracking, but not on public lands. And his climate plan imagines a slow move away from fossil fuel. and to renewable energy. Trump framed his opponent's climate change plan as something that will kill his chances in Pennsylvania. But let's step back here. Is Pennsylvania really such a monolith

when it comes to fracking support and how do Pennsylvanians feel about climate change? Joining me today to talk about this is Rachel McDevitt, Energy Reporter for State Impact Pennsylvania based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. You know, you recently spoke, I understand, to a lot of Pennsylvania voters about how they feel about climate change.

Can you give me a little bit about the themes you heard from these voters? Right. So we put an online survey up on our website on State Impact Pennsylvania, and about 200 people got back to us. About half of them said they want to see that move, that shift to clean energy through investment, through mandates, through incentives to encourage it, and they emphasized to move away from fossil fuels. And other popular topics included a carbon policy to either price carbon or limit carbon emissions, strict regulations on other types of pollution, and jobs programs to retrain fossil fuel workers and encourage, again, that shift to clean energy. That's interesting.

Who would have thunk? What are we seeing in polling data about how Pennsylvanians feel about climate change? So polls tell us that around 70% of Pennsylvanians accept climate change is happening and they want their lawmakers to do more about it. That's 70% figure. But there is a divide in opinion by party. I'm sure that's no surprise. It's much less important for Republican voters.

A Franklin and Marshall College poll from last year, they do a lot of polling specifically in Pennsylvania. They found only about 40% of Republicans think climate change is causing problems now compared to 85% of Democrats. Is Pennsylvania such a monolith when it comes to fracking support as Trump seems to believe. I don't think Pennsylvania is a monolith in really any issue, and fracking is probably no different.

There was a recent CBS UGov poll that found 52% of registered voters in Pennsylvania opposed fracking. That's similar to other polls. Franklin and Marshall College in January this year found 44% of voters in the state oppose shale gas drilling and 48% support it. But they also found 48% support a ban on fracking. I do think it's important to point out that fracking can be kind of a charged word. So if you ask how people feel about fracking versus gas drilling, you could get some different results. But they're pretty evenly divided on the issue, it looks like. And this has been a fight that's been going on for quite a while, hasn't it? Yeah, I think fracking has been controversial since it started in the state.

The boom really started about a decade ago. People who live near those sites, those well sites have complained about health effects. some people who leased their land to gas companies say they were cheated out of royalties. And just this year, our Attorney General released a grand jury report that detailed numerous health and environmental complaints against the industry. But by and large, the state legislature has largely been supportive of the industry and welcoming for it in the state. There's an interesting quote in your story that I've got to play. This is from voter Jacob Griffith Rosenberger, who lives in the Pittsburgh area. he's talking about how some say shifting to clean energy will mean huge job losses.

And so a solution to that kind of scamongering is saying, okay, sure, we're going to lose jobs associated with coal and fracking and natural gas, but we're going to gain all these jobs working on renewable energy. Is that something you hear as an energy reporter that it's not so much about the industry, but more about the number of jobs? Jobs are definitely a big talking point, especially in our state legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. We have a Democratic governor.

But our lawmakers routinely make statements that doing good for the environment or trying to fight climate change is going to cost those energy jobs and hurt the economy. They make it a choice, which green energy advocates argue is a false one. And it's important to point out that all total energy jobs in the Commonwealth make up less than 5% of Pennsylvania's total workforce. That is very interesting. Let's move on to renewable energy. Is it picking up steam in Pennsylvania at all?

It is a little bit. The state released a report this year that shows clean energy jobs are among the fastest growing in the state. They grew at over 8% between 2017 and 2019. They do use a broad term for clean energy. They include jobs in energy efficiency that's in like HVAC, heating, cooling, air conditioning systems. But that sector added almost 7,800 jobs between 2017 and 2019 to reach a total of around 100,000. and jobs. But those numbers are for the pre-pandemic before COVID-19 came and there were lots of shutdowns. So it is likely that at least some of those jobs were lost. Very informative stuff.

Rachel McDevitt, Energy Reporter for a State Impact, Pennsylvania. She's based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you for having me. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to look at some of this science on the ballot during the election, from ballot propositions to stem. candidates. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break. I'm Iraflato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. The election is less than one week away. In addition to the presidential candidates, science will also be on the ballot. In some states, voters will decide on propositions that focus on scientific research and the environment.

and in other local elections, there are science candidates in the running. So what does this all mean? Well, my next guest is here to fill us in. Jeffrey Mervis is Senior Correspondent for Science Magazine. He's based out of Washington. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira, thanks. Happy to be here.

Let's talk about some of these ballot propositions that focus on science. In California, voters will be deciding on Proposition 71 about allocating money, to stem cell research. What are the debates happening over this? Right. So this is a request to extend something that was created in 2004 Institute for Regenerative Medicine. It allowed California to fund billions of dollars in research in an area that the federal government didn't want to fund for political reasons. And now they are asking voters to approve another $5.5 billion in new bonds. There hasn't really been any polling. I think the idea of the Institute has a lot of popular support. I think it'll come down to whether people feel that in this current economy, it's still something that they would like to see the

state continue to do. Interesting. And Nevada voters will be deciding on questions. Six, the Renewable Energy Standards Initiative. Why is this significant to the state? This would double the percentage of energy that utilities need to generate from sustainable sources. It's already been approved once, but the state constitution requires voters to say yes twice. If they do, then that will set a target for the utilities and for state regulators. to monitor. Jeffrey, you know, it seems like every election cycle, there seems to be more, quote, STEM candidates. Is this year any different? There's a few races that I'm watching this year that I think could be interesting. One of them in New York on Long Island features someone who, if she wins,

would become the first woman PhD scientist in Congress. Her name is Nancy Goroff. She's a chemist, and she is running a very strong campaign. Another woman, who is a water resources management expert out in Montana by the name of Kathleen Williams, actually ran in 2018 against an incumbent and lost narrowly. Now she is running again, and she is neck and neck with her opponent. Her name is Kathleen Williams. Her opponent is the state auditor, Matt Rosendale, And she's given a pretty good chance of winning. I think Dr. Goroff will probably need another blue wave in order to get into office. That is, the Democrats will need to pick up several more seats as part of a broader success at the polls.

So those are two interesting races that would bring to Congress, legislatures, both of them women, who have a very substantial background in science and who have talked about science in their campaigns. Nancy Gorozopoen actually calls her a radical professor. And her reply to that is if believing that climate change is real, if believing that scientific evidence is important, if believing that we need to listen to the scientists to fight COVID-19 is radical, then count me in. Well, that's part of what I was going to ask you because you don't have to be a scientist to run.

You can be a quote unquote a normal politician. Do people think that if they now attach the word, I'm pro science, that might help their efforts, especially in this COVID year? Well, that's an interesting question. There is a lot of support for scientists, Tony Fauci, the head of infectious disease instituted NIH being, you know, the prime example, the scientist who probably has, you know, the public has more faith in than anyone when it comes to COVID-19. That support for science doesn't necessarily translate to scientists. And the fact that Goroff's opponent feels that he can win support

among his constituents by labeling her a radical professor tells you that it isn't automatically a positive. One thing that the candidates in 2018 learned is that you can't really run on science. And Joe Cunningham is a good example. He was an ocean engineer turned lawyer in South Carolina, which was a very Republican district. He managed to eke out a victory in 2018, not because he was a scientist, but because he supported issues like banning offshore drilling that the scientist also had a consensus on. He ran very much as a centrist because running as a scientist, I think, is still considered somewhat elitist, at least among a lot of constituents. So he had to sort of walk a narrow line between saying, here is what the science is telling us,

and here is what you, as a regular voter, you know, need to understand. And I am the right person. to carry out those policies without necessarily being a scientist myself. One last question. I know I've noticed by watching some of the candidates on my own television, there are doctors, there are physicians running, and some of them are not running as Democrats. What actually does it mean to be a science candidate? And would that cross party lines? That's a very good point, Ira, because in fact, before 2018, there was some two dozen doctors,

MDs in Congress, and almost all of them are Republican. So being a doctor didn't necessarily mean you were a Democrat or a liberal or that you supported the Affordable Care Act or any of a number of other issues. In fact, historically, the medical profession has been a pretty conservative, you know, group. So what some of the candidates, though, did as Democrats and Lauren Underwood who is a freshman member running for re-election, who's a health policy analyst in the Obama administration did, was they focused specifically on aspects of Obamacare that were popular with their constituents and made the point that they understand the health care system.

But the fact that they had an MD or an RN in Lawrence case after their name didn't necessarily identify them politically. Very interesting. This will be an interesting season to watch for a lot of different reasons. Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you very much. Jeffrey Mervis, senior correspondent

for Science Magazine based out of Washington. This election season has been filled with disinformation, unverified stories of voter fraud, other false claims, and with possible delayed election results, there could be even more of this

disinformation coming. This can make it difficult to decipher fact from fiction. So how has this information been used during the election? How does it spread? How might you spot it? What is the main aim of it? That's what my next guest is here to talk about. Dean Freelon, Associate Professor and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. That's at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Welcome to Science Friday. Well, thank you for having me. Does this information have a definition as opposed to just lying about something? Sure, yeah.

I like to distinguish between disinformation, which is false and or damaging information spread intentionally with the intention to damage some opponent party versus misinformation, which is false or damaging information spread unintentionally where the person spreading it believes it to be true. Give me an example. Okay, so I study the disinformation that is spread by state-sponsored agencies. including Russia. And so they spread all sorts of narratives that are intended to damage both sides of the political aisle. These include things, just, you know, a lot of it is just sort of opinionated stuff.

Some of it is factually false. And of course, you know, we have very good information and evidence that this actually is spread on a state-sponsored basis. And so they know what they're doing. Versus some of the COVID-19 stuff that some of your audience may be aware of. Some of these folks who spread this actually believe that, you know, masks aren't effective or, you know, COVID-19 was cooked up by China in a lab. So they actually believe this is true, which has some different implications for how you would correct that kind of thing. So that's my point.

So they're not aiming to convince you. They just want to confuse everybody. Yeah. So I think, you know, convincing is one aspect. One other important aspect of information is that it's often targeted at people that are very far to one side of the political aisles. So it works based on confirmation bias, really confirming a lot of the things that you believe about the other side, nine times out of ten, that's going to be negative. And so, you know, it's not trying to sort of switch people from one side to the other in many cases, in most cases probably, it's just trying to further inflame the sort of negative things that folks already believe about folks that they disagree with.

Now, I've seen this information starting with one story. It gains traction. It gets passed around. Is that a typical case? Yeah, I mean, I think it can spread through social networks. You know, I think this is where one of the major places where we see it, it can also come, you know, from top down, from politicians and other places. And so, so yes, and I think that even something that starts out as disinformation, something that's spread by an agent that has a knowledge of the falsehoods that they're spreading, can also be spread on a misinformation basis by people who pick it up and then are not aware of its origins and its intentions. And so the same piece of information can have a disinformation relationship to the people that sort of seed it or initially put it into the network, but can also have a misinformation relationship to people who spread it unaware of its original provenance. So part of the disinformation campaign might involve having you be part of it by spreading it with misinformation.

In fact, that's actually one of the best ways to do it because people who really believe what they're spreading are going to be all that more enthusiastic about what it is. and also because they will be known to the folks that follow them on social media, there are a much better vector for this content than unknown parties who may be part of state-sponsored information campaigns. You know, disinformation has always been present in elections. How is it different during this one? Well, I think, you know, historically, politicians have always been seen to bend the truth, to say things that are, you know, you could sort of take issue with some of the factual aspects of it.

But I think within the past four years, certainly since 2016, we've really seen an uptick in sort of wholesale falsehoods, falsehoods, claims about which nothing really is true, made up out of whole cloth, he might say. And so it really seems to be to be a matter of degree, the extent to which we've sort of moved from this kind of spin-doctoring, bending the truth to just sort of outright making things up that really have absolutely no basis in truth at all. Sounds like 1984 that you're describing, the big lie, the bigger the lie, the more believable it becomes. Yeah, I mean, repetition, you know, psychological studies have shown that repeating something over and over again, right? So Orwell really had his finger on the pulse there as far as the psychological empirical results go. Repeating something over and over again, even if it is false, makes it feel true to the people that are perceiving it.

And I think that, you know, many folks in the political arena in the United States, as well as when we're talking about foreign state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, advantage of that. If you can repeat it enough times, people start to believe it's true, especially when it flatters or reinforces their pre-existing political beliefs. I'm Ira Flato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Okay, how can I put on some armor? Can I protect myself or be better at recognizing disinformation? Yeah, I mean, again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but it really does start with confirmation bias. The disinformation that any individual will typically be most susceptible to will be that which they already believe, right? And so what that means is that when somebody is trying very, very hard to convince you of something that's too good to be true and that would

really advantage your side, that in my mind raises the possibility that may be disinformation. So it bears further investigation. You want to go out and look for corroborating evidence. You want to make sure that reputable information and news sources have confirmed this to be true. And there haven't been major doubts raised about the veracity of the information. So you really want to go out there, figure out what's going on. And the more it's trying to verify or reinforce those pre-existing political beliefs, the higher chance that it is, in fact, disinformation. Beware of strangers bearing gifts.

Absolutely. There is a possibility we will not know the election results for a while. how do you expect this information to be used during that waiting period? I think that this information will be used in ways that is typically used now, for example, to denigrate the other side, to accuse the other side of malfeasance, of doing bad things, of fraud. And these are the kinds of claims that really are going to need solid evidence behind them, or they should have solid evidence behind them before they are accepted. So I think listeners should really be on the lookout for any kind of stories,

are claims that are trying to denigrate the other side, trying to blame them for whatever is going on. I mean, clearly, if something's blaming your side, you're going to reject it out of hand anyway. So just really understanding that a commitment to the truth requires that it apply equally to your side as well as the other. So if you do see these kinds of claims that are accusing the other side of doing something really bad, you know, you want to make sure that that is actually true, and you can do that by seeking corroborating evidence from reputable news and information outlets. There have already been lots of allegations of voter mail-in fraud, that kind of thing. So I would expect that to continue, you know, people claiming that there are people from the deep state or whatever that are sort of conspiring against, you know, Trump or there have already

been, there's already been disinformation circulating about possible election-related violence. And so claims of violence, of course, it actually may happen. So when those claims go out, it'll be really, really important to make sure that they are verifiable. and it's not just people trying to stir up dirt on the other side. Well, as someone who studies this and is a scholar on this, do you have any greater concerns about larger impacts of disinformation? Absolutely. So I think one of the major impacts of disinformation is what I call the second order impacts.

And so these are effects of disinformation that don't depend on actual content, contact with disinformation content. And so basically what I'm talking about is the idea that this information is out there raises to some extent your paranoia level about any kind of content that comes from a source that you don't necessarily know about, in the back of your mind, you're always thinking, is that disinformation? Could it be? So sewing that kind of doubt is something that's the mere existence of disinformation being out there kind of engenders. And it also becomes a rhetorical weapon by which people can say, oh, well, you know, something I don't like, therefore that's

disinformation, right? And so without any evidence, you can sort of point the finger and say, oh, that's probably part of a disinformation campaign just to kind of denigrate it there. And so those two factors constitute what I would call a second-order effect that doesn't really require any sort of actual interaction with disinformation content. Well, this has been quite interesting. Thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. Sure thing. No problem.

Dean Freelon, Associate Professor and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We're going to take a break. and when we come back, we're getting into the Halloween spirit to talk about a spooky creature that might be, dare I say, charismatic also. This is Science Friday, I'm Iraflato. It's time for another charismatic creature corner.

This time, we're getting a little spooky. Yeah, joining me again is our charismatic creature correspondent. That's not her making those noises. Sci-fry producer, Kathleen David, is hi Kathleen. Hey, Ira. Remind our listeners about our charismatic creature corner. Right.

So this is the segment where I bring you a creature. And with the help of a guest, we try to convince you that this creature is worthy of being inducted into our charismatic creature Hall of Fame. So that means it's worthy of sitting among more traditionally charismatic creatures like red pandas or sloths, you may say. Yeah, right. Now I get it.

And as you might remember, we don't make it easy for ourselves. In the past, we have talked about hell ants, as well as slime molds. Charismatic both. I can only imagine what creature you've brought us this time. Well, it is the day before Halloween, so of course we have to get a little bit spooky. Ira, what do you think about vampire bats? Well, you know, I once visited a scientist known as the Bat lady of Barnard who fed her vampire bats frozen blood from an ice cube tray in her freezer, but I'm yet to be convinced they are charismatic. Well, I think they're great,

and I am here to convince you that they are with the help of a special guest. We've got Dr. Dan Riskin, an evolutionary biologist, currently an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Welcome to Science Friday, Dan. Thanks for having me. I think to start before we get into why vampire bats are so cool and cute, we need to get the obvious. We need to get the obvious. out of the way. Vampire bats drink blood, right? Yeah, they do. And to be honest, that's part of what makes them so charismatic. But they're weird among mammals because they have become parasites. So they are a group of three bats that are only found in the Americas, and they have adapted to feeding on the blood of other animals and getting all their calories that way, which is super weird for

a mammal to do. And as a result of that, they've also changed in other weird ways and become totally different from other mammals. Dan, can you give us a little verbal picture? How big are they? Where can you find them? So vampire bats are a lot smaller than people expect. They're actually just little things, about the size of a mouse, frankly. I mean, the wingspan is only about 18 centimeters, so like seven inches. And, you know, they're almost nothing when you see them on the wall.

They're just little balls of fur. So there are three kinds of vampire bats. The one that's best studied is the common vampire bat. That's the one that you hear about most. They feed on cattle mostly. but there are also two others, the white-winged vampire bat and the hairy-legged vampire bat. Now, those two are bird specialists. So in all three cases, these bats, they sneak up on a sleeping animal in the nighttime,

and they make a little tiny cut somewhere, you know, inconspicuous, like maybe the toe of a sleeping bird or maybe near the ear of a sleeping cow or near its hoof, and then they put their jaw up against that little new wound. They've just made a tiny cut, and they start licking. and they lick and they drink and they pee. And they sit there for like up to 20 minutes getting their fill. And then when they're full, they leave and they go back to the roost and digest it. But they have a very tight budget.

So they have to be able to do this pretty much every single night. You know, you're trying to convince me this is charismatic so far. That description is sort of blood curdling with anything else. Well, no, if the blood curdles, they starve, right? And so, I mean, that's part of the game, right? They have to have to have a way to keep that blood flowing. And so their saliva has special chemicals in it to keep the blood from clotting. Because it's honestly, if you take a common vampire bat that feeds on mammals and sometimes

does feed on people, that cut is only about half a centimeter deep, half a centimeter wide, and it would clot relatively quickly if left to its own devices. So the bat has to keep licking and drinking. It's not sucking on it. It doesn't have its fangs, you know, stabbed into the skin. It's just licking and drinking. and that saliva has all these chemical properties that keep it flowing. And the saliva becomes very interesting because now you've got something that stops clotting

from happening. And there are all kinds of drugs that have been inspired by bat's saliva, just trying to figure out how to do that medically. Well, now you've got me into the, that's a really cool thing kind of idea. That is cool. But what kinds of animals do they prefer? Do they like one kind over another? Yeah.

Well, so one of the great mysteries with these bats is what their native food was, because if you take a common vampire bat, they love feeding on cattle. And cattle, I mean, it's like we brought McDonald's drive-thrus into the Americas for the vats to feed on because there were no cows there back in the day. It was 1493, I think, that the first cow came over. And so now they're totally adapted to feeding on cattle, but we don't know what they were feeding on before. It's an open question.

So any time a vampire bat is seen feeding on some native animal in the Americas, like a tapir or anything else or a person for that matter, everybody gets all excited because this might be a hint about what they were doing before. And there is the possibility. There were a lot of people in the Americas before the Europeans came over. I mean, there were huge societies. And it's quite possible that for Vampire Bats, for a long time, people were their main source of food. We don't have proof of that, but it's a respectable hypothesis. Do we know why? They evolved to just drink blood. It seems like such an odd evolutionary pathway. It's a real question about how you end up sort of worked into that corner. And in an evolution,

sense of feeding on blood because once you're feeding on blood, it's really hard to get fat, because there isn't a lot of fat in blood. And so when you're drinking, you can sort of satisfy your needs, but once the blood runs out, once your stomach's empty, you don't have a big budget to get going again. And so there's a big problem for bats. If they can't get food pretty much every single night, this causes a huge problem for them. But they've come up with a solution, which is to share. And so vampire bats are famous in the biology world because if you come home after failing to find a cow to feed on, your buddies, even if they're not related to you, will often vomit in your mouth for you, which is just, I mean, what better way to show that you

love someone than to do that? And vampire bats will do this for each other, and as a result, the whole colony can kind of get by when a few of them aren't able to find food. And there are all kinds of studies about who barfs for whom, and if, you know, you barf for me last week, so I got your back this time. But hey, you held out last time when I was asking you, so forget it. I'm not going to help you out this time. All of these social, social dynamics all play out and they have to be very intelligent to keep track of who is sharing and who's trying to cheat. And they do. They keep track of it all. And as a result, they're very intelligent animals. So would it be fair to say that vampire bats have friends? Yes, it would

definitely be fair to say vampire bats have friends. In fact, there's a study that just came out this year that showed that when bats were kept in a captive colony and made friends with their buddies, after they were released and allowed to go into a huge colony of vampire bats and a great big tree in Panama and, you know, able to just disperse and make new friends, they kind of stuck with their buddies from high school. They had friends already, and that's who they chose to stick with after they went there. And so these friendships are long term. And friendship sounds like a non-scientific word, but really it's kind of the best word for it. Dan, you're kind of famous in the bat research world for a particular study you did a little while back where you put vampire bats

on a treadmill. Yes, that is my absolute claim to fame. I'm the guy that put vampire bats on a treadmill. And to be honest, I didn't know it was going to go as well as it did. So I was a young PhD student, and I knew that they were good on the ground and, you know, walking and crawling and stuff like that. So I just wanted to see how they walk. And I wanted to compare it to other animals. And the way all the other animals are studied, you know, a horse, cat, dog, whatever. You put it on a treadmill. You change the speed and you look at how its leg movements change. And so that seemed easy enough. So I built this, you know, box with a float. that moved. It was like a little plexiglass bread box. And so we went to Trinidad. We caught some vampire bats.

We put them into this box one at a time. And I turned it on and the bat started walking. And their walking gate was beautiful. It was exactly like a cat, exactly like a dog, but a little bit lower center of mass, a little bit creepy, kind of like the movie of Bram Stoker's Dracula when Gary Oldman's going up the wall. It was pretty much exactly that gate. But they could do this over a whole range of speeds. And so I wanted to know what the upper limit was. to how fast they could walk. And so I cranked the speed a little bit and this one bat switched from walking to these running push-ups. So all of a sudden it was bounding into the air, pushing off with its wings and then landing on its hind limbs and then pushing off with its wings again in a gate

that had never been seen before. And so I was shocked. I tested another bat. It did the same thing. Another bat, another bat, another bat. And lo and behold, we had discovered that these vampire bats have a running gate that doesn't exist in any other animals. So bats as a lineage have generally become very bad at walking. But the vampire bats, with their feeding on blood and sneaking up on animals, have evolved a new running gate. And so we discovered that. That was my, that still is.

I mean, it's a highlight for sure. I'm so proud of that. Dan, as somebody who has studied vampire bats for a while now, have you ever been bitten by one? Oh, I had a close call. I haven't been fed on by a vampire bat, thankfully. I mean, what I keep telling the people I'm working with is, relax, there's cows nearby. They really do prefer cows over people.

It's much easier to get food out of a, to get blood out of a cow than to get blood out of a person. And some of the places I go, it's quite common for the cattle to get fed on by vampire bats. And I have, you know, I have been lucky that way. But I did once catch a vampire bat in a mist net. So mist nets are the way you catch birds or bats, and we'd set one up. And the vampire bats, you almost always catch them on the bottom layer. This neat thing about vampires, they fly really close to the ground. or maybe they're running a little bit too.

We don't exactly know. And so we caught this vampire bat and I grabbed it with my big thick glove and the gloves were just too thick. I couldn't untangle it. So I took one glove off and I was working to get the vampire bat out and it quickly turned its head and hit the tip of my finger. And I pulled back and I expected to be bleeding, but I was not. And I thought, oh, that was close.

I thought it hit me, but it didn't. And I finished getting the bat out and I went about, you know, we got it back into the cage where we were going to keep it. And then a little later, I realized I had a big flap of skin on the tip of my finger that had been sliced. So it was such a sharp cut that I didn't even feel it, but it basically cut the callus off the tip of my finger. I wasn't bleeding, but it was a good reminder of what they can do with those teeth. Wow. Speaking of which, I mean, if vampire bats are living on blood, how come they don't get sick from whatever sickness these animals may be having in their blood?

They do get sick. And so there are diseases that can spread from wildlife to vampire bats. And there are problems with different diseases that can spread. And rabies is one disease that can spread to vampire bats. And that becomes a huge problem because then it spreads to other livestock. But the disease moves differently in different animals. And this is something that's getting a ton of attention right now with COVID-19 because it's thought that that disease probably came from bats originally.

And so there's a whole bunch of coronaviruses, for example, not to mention other viruses like Ebola that come from bats. And the bats don't show the same kinds of symptoms as people do when they get these things. And so there's a lot of research into the immune systems of bats to try to understand how it is that those diseases that are so deadly for us, how the bats do so well with those diseases in spite of them. But yeah, vampire bats do get sick sometimes. And what's really interesting is the way they deal with being sick. So there's a study that came out just this week showing that when vampire bats get sick, they tend to socially isolate.

They tend to stay away from their friends. These researchers put transmitters on them that can tell how far apart they are from other transmitters. And so all the bats in the colony are a bunch of them are wearing these things and they know exactly how close the bats get to each other. And when they experimentally made some of the bats feel a little bit unwell for a couple days, but the bats were fine in the end. Those bats that weren't feeling well tended to be withdrawn. They didn't mix with the other bats. They stayed away from them. They did exactly what Anthony Fauci says you're supposed to do.

They socially isolated. And then when they felt better, they went back to it. And so studying how bats deal with illness is another place where vampire bats are just a treasure trove of information that can be useful to us. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking with the bat fanatic. I have to call him a bat. He's a bat biologist. Dan Riskin, who is at the University of Toronto and Mississauga? Dan, is there anything that you don't know about these bats or any bats? batch that you still need to know?

Yeah. I mean, everything. That's a beauty of any kind of scientific system is the more you learn, the more you want to know and the more questions you have. And for me, one of the really interesting questions that I literally lie awake at night thinking about has to do with echolocation. So echolocation is something that most people have a pretty good grip on. It's this idea that a bat shouts and then hears the echo and the difference between the

noise it made and the noise it hears, along with the amount of time it took, tells them something about how far away things are and what they're going after. So they can avoid flying into trees. And even more impressively, they could, you know, pick out a moth and then chase it down and catch it. What people don't realize, first of all, is that most of these bats are doing it extremely loudly. Some of these bats are as loud as smoke detectors. So if they were on a frequency we could hear, you know, if they were low enough that we could hear them, they would be annoying as all get out. So it's nice that there are these high-pitched noises we can't figure out. But here's the thing.

If you have one bat flying in one room and there's one moth and it's using its echoes to find that moth, I get it. I can kind of picture how that works. But put me in a cave with 10,000 bats all echolocating at the same time, flying in a giant cloud. How on God's green earth do they know which one is their echo? How do they possibly hear their faint echo when the bat right next to them is screaming at the top of their lungs? And so for me, that is just a system that I just, people are working on it and people understand pieces of it. But I just don't, I can't get my head around how that happens. Just going to a bat cave just fills you with this wonder of like, we don't know, we've barely scratched the surface on understanding these beautiful creatures and how they live their lives.

So bats are, I mean, at least in my opinion, very cute. But people are still scared of them. I mean, that seems to be a common fear still for people. Are people justified in this fear? My experience has been that the fear of bats is a thing that's changing. It used to be that if you looked up bat in an encyclopedia, you would find the one picture of a bat, and it was a picture someone had taken while they were holding it badly, and it was showing its teeth in self-defense. And it was sort of black and white and grainy, and it said some things about bats and how they fly, and they're the only mammals that fly. And, you know, we just didn't have that much to tell. But now with the internet and with pictures and with videos and with high-speed cameras and with good echolocation recordings, you can get an introduction to bats now that is much more interesting and much more just fun to look at and engaging. And when I talk to kids about bats now, I'd never get this. Ew, bats. I always get a yay bats. Kids love bats. And adults, for the most part, once they get the proper introduction, love them too. And so I lead wildlife tours sometimes to different

parts of the world. And I took a group to Borneo. And everybody was excited to see orangutans. And we did see orangutans. And the orangutans were great. But we also caught some bats while we were there, because I brought a net and I got permission. And when we caught those bats, these little things, these little pipistrels. It was just magic. I mean, you get to see them close up. You get to see what, you know, they look right at you, and you get to see what the wing looks like, and you get to just see them still not flying around your head, not in the dark, just a nice introduction to them, and you get to see how cute and just vulnerable and adorable they are. And then you sort of start to contemplate how many different kinds there are and all the different

places you can go see them and all the secrets they're holding. And they're just amazing. So I think the fear really comes down to just needing a better introduction to them. Well, I think that Dan has laid out a fantastic case for the induction of the vampire bat to the charismatic creature. Corner Hall of Fame. What do you think, Ira? Well, you know, I was going to say that because of Dracula and people's fear, bats and whatever, that they are not charismatic, but Dan has turned me around. Sweet. Of all that they are so talented and skillful.

I never knew these things. So I'm going to say, yes, they do belong in our charismatic creature corner. Dan, are you satisfied with that answer? Well, yes. I mean, we should get to work on some other weird creatures. I mean, I'd love to see you do some more parasites for sure. Thank you so much, Dan. Dan Riskin, an evolutionary biologist, currently an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Thanks, Dan. Thank you. And thank you, charismatic, Creature Corner, correspondent, sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis. Anytime, Ira. And speaking of charismatic, Charles Berkwurst is our director. Our producers are Alexa Lim and Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, and Kathleen Davis. Boo J. Leatherman composed our theme music on this Halloween Eve.

Have a happy and safe Halloween. I'm Ira Flato.