The Daily - 'Animal,' Episode 6: Bats

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

On the final episode of “Animal,” Sam Anderson travels to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to meet with a creature he's long been afraid of: bats.For photos and videos of Sam's journey to the Yucatán, and to listen to the full series, visit nytimes.com/animal. You can search for “Animal” wherever you get your podcasts. 

Hey, it's Michael. Today we have something really special for you, a blissful break from the news. It's a new series from NYT Audio called Animal. My colleague Sam Anderson from the Times Magazine traveled the world to have encounters with animals, not to claim them or to tame them, but just to appreciate them.

Each episode is a journey to get closer to a creature that Sam loves. For the next six weeks, we'll be running this limited series every Sunday here on The Daily Feed. But if you want to hear all the episodes right now, you can search for it wherever you get your podcasts. Today, our final episode, episode six. Hope you enjoy it. One of the very worst things I've ever read in my whole entire life is this poem by D.H. Lawrence called Bat. At evening, sitting on this terrace, he's in Florence, when the sun from the west beyond Pisa,

beyond the mountains of Carrara, departs and the world is taken by surprise. D.H. Lawrence actually wrote some really great poems about animals, about goats and elephants and even snakes. Swallows gave way to bats. But something about bats just breaks his brain. This poem is 100% trash talking. These creatures that disgust him.

And the poem ends with the dumbest ending I've ever encountered in the work of a major writer. In China, the bat is symbol for happiness. Not for me! Exclamation point. From the New York Times, this is Animal. I'm Sam Anderson. Episode 6, Bats. Bats, I hate them. I hate those things.

They suck. Bats. Poem. I mean, for a little context. I'm reading this stupid poem in a rental car, hurtling forward into the jungles of Mexico. There's a fear of having a bat stuck in your hair. And driving the car is my dear, wonderful friend, Alan,

one of my favorite animals on Earth. This is like a thing. Like, they squeak out. He's actually the one who introduced me to this bat poem in the first place. I hate it. Not for me. Alan and I met in our 20s,

when we were young and innocent and had beautiful beautiful fluffy hair. It is true that you and I have known each other for 22 years. But a lot has happened since then. There have been births and deaths and all kinds of big life changes. Now Alan and I live on opposite coasts, but we're still always talking to each other about everything,

including our dream of taking this big trip together to Mexico, which is where Alan is from. And now we are here, on that trip, in the Yucatan, one of the most epic places on Earth. This is the place where the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit,

where Maya civilization rose and fell. The reality of Mayan culture is art. All of it is art. And now it's this wild explosion of biodiversity. I mean, look, to your right, as you can see... It's like lizards and toucans and monkeys and jaguars and manatees. Manatees? All animals I would love to spend time with. But that's not why we're here. We have come to the Yucatan to meet an animal that I do not particularly want to spend time with.

The bat. Because my attitude toward bats is pretty close to D.H. Lawrence's. I am slightly embarrassed to admit they're not for me. We are all driving into the unknown together. We're like, we're here for the bat. It's a pretty uncomfortable place to be. And I do sort of... My family actually likes to make fun of me

for being afraid of bats. Yeah, there's a famous story in my family at the time. Because one time a bat flew into a room I was in and I allegedly screamed and shoved my mother-in-law out of the way. Pushed her out of the way. Allegedly. And just ran, went running out of.

But in my defense, it's not just me. Bats are spooky, like famously spooky. They live in the dark. They can carry diseases. They bite. If you want to turn a normal house into a haunted house, you can just put some bats on it. All the others, I was very drawn to all of those creatures.

And this is the first one that I will run away screaming from. So why are we going to see it? Because of that, no? Yeah, because of that. But I didn't want to feel this way. I wanted to want to understand bats. I wanted to get close to them and not run away screaming. I wanted to give them the respect and curiosity that I have for all the rest of the animal kingdom. But how are you supposed to get to know a bat?

Well, you find someone who knows the bats. And that person is Rodrigo Medellin. So Alan and I, along with my colleague Caitlin Roberts, meet up with Rodrigo and his bat team in the lobby of a very pink hotel in the tiny town of Xpujil, which is in one of the more jungly parts of the Yucatan Peninsula, down south near the border with Guatemala. So the students that we have here, I have three students here. Angel is starting. Rodrigo is a professor of ecology at UNAM, the big university in Mexico City.

He and his students have been studying the bats of the Yucatan for years. In the nature world, especially in the bat world, Rodrigo is a real celebrity. He's actually famous for helping to save a whole species of bat from the brink of extinction. It's called the lesser long-nosed bat. And he's agreed to let us tag along with him and his students while they do their bat work this week. us tag along with him and his students while they do their bat work this week. And while we're all sitting around chatting, getting to know each other, I notice the photo on the lock screen of Rodrigo's phone. This is Vampirum Spectrum, the biggest bat in the continent and the biggest carnivorous bat of the world.

How big? What? Its body? And how wide its wings? What? carnivorous bat of the world. How big? About that big. What? Its body? And how wide its wings? What? No! Almost a meter.

It is terrifying. If you've ever had a nightmare about a bat, this is probably what you saw. It has huge, veiny ears and beady black eyes and this long snout full of murder teeth. I imagine bats always just eating like little mosquitoes. Oh, not these guys. When they bite you, you really feel the bite.

Its body is like the size of a small dog, and its wingspan is like a hawk. Yeah, and it is a hawk because the wings are very broad and he's very maneuverable. A little question. Are bats social animals? And it's clear that Rodrigo just lives for bats. He gets so excited telling us about this big

freaky bat. And not just that bat. He's excited about every bat on Earth. And he wants to tell us about all of them. And then he comes back, lands on top of the females, and he salts them. What they eat, where they live, how they mate. That disgusting mix that he has in his sack falls on the females. He's marking his females that way.

What the hell? on the females. He's marking his females that way. What the hell? Bats are gross. I'm sorry, guys. Can you tell me why you are not terrified of bats? I would trade you and ask you, why are you terrified of bats? I don't get it when people are terrified of bats. I really don't. You've never screamed and run away from a bat? Me? Absolutely not. Never, never, never, never.

Rodrigo isn't only a bat scientist. He is a bat evangelist. I started, my first bat came into my house when I was 13 years old. What is that? Do the math. It all started when he was a tiny little kid. He loved animals. He says the first word he ever said was flamingo. He told us he pronounced it gluglingo or something like that. And he was actually kind of a prodigy. Rodrigo knew so much about animals that he ended up on this famous primetime game show in Mexico

called El Gran Premio de los 60 y 4 mil pesos, the 64,000 peso grand prize. 64,000 peso grand prize. And so this little kid is on primetime TV answering every question they could throw at him about animals. And a biology professor from UNAM was watching and he invited Rodrigo to come out with him into the field. So little Rodrigo ends up going out with scientists to study all kinds of animals. And eventually, one of them takes him into a cave. And this is when Rodrigo Medellin holds his very first bat. He told us that the moment shook him inside, and he suddenly understood why he was here on Earth,

to protect and advocate for bats, which is what he's been doing ever since. So, originally, the image of bats was positive. According to Rodrigo, bats are not only not disgusting or dangerous, they are beautiful and smart. And because they play a crucial role in pest control and pollinating and dispersing seeds, they're also good for the world.

But then something happened that made it negative. What was that? Basically, they're just victims of bad PR. Dracula, which is an amazing novel. You know, Dracula and vampires and stuff. It's an unfair world, seriously. And it really is an unfair world. Like many animals on Earth right now, bats are in trouble.

Not only for the usual reasons like habitat loss and climate change, but for special problems all their own. There are devastating diseases, and they get annihilated by the big turbines at wind farms. And there's also this issue of the bad PR. People like me are afraid of bats because of the whole flappy, spooky, bitey thing, which is then used as an excuse to do all kinds of violent, horrible things to them. People poison them or seal them up in caves or even burn them alive. But it wasn't always this way, especially not here in the Yucatan.

In pre-Columbian times, bats had a very positive image. You see the archaeological remains, pottery, temples, etc. You are going to find bats represented. In the culture of the Maya, this ancient civilization that thrived here for thousands of years, bats are everywhere. In stories, in paintings, they even had a month called Zots. The month of Zots roughly coincides

with the month of October, which is the month of Zots roughly coincides with the month of October, which is the month of happiness and wealth and abundance, because it's the month of harvest. And in Maya mythology, bats represent a living link between our world and the underworld. Death, basically. Your soul goes to rest after you're dead and bats help you get there the maya called the underworld shibalba or the place of fear which if you ask me bats are a perfect mascot

for a place like that okay huh all right so we're doing this show about animals and every animal we've gone to has been something that I love and feel drawn to. And the bat is the first that I'm not drawn to that I scream and I run away from. You are not going to run away from bats after we're done in this trip. Okay. I'm open to it. I'll convert you. i'm absolutely convinced of that conversion story okay let's try all right let's go muchas gracias for the breakfast Even the potholes have potholes. Alan and Caitlin and I follow Rodrigo and his students down the most potholy road I've ever been on.

It's the underworld trying to open up. Into the jungle, which is just overwhelmingly dense. It's like a solid block of trees and vines. And apparently inside of it somewhere is a Maya ruin called El Hormiguero, where bats live. I'm just like a 10 excitement. Well, no, there is like an animal part of me that is screaming and running away right now, even as we go there. These are bats that Rodrigo and his team have been studying for years and today they're going to check up on them, catch them and tag them and record a bunch of data.

Whoa, it's so big. The temple is magnificent. I've never seen anything like it. It's this crumbling structure built out of white limestone roughly 1,500 years ago. Covered with ornate carvings. And the front door looks like a giant mouth with huge stone fangs. So when you go inside, it's like you're being swallowed. You look just above and you can see the teeth of the jaguar coming down. Rodrigo leads us up these ancient stone steps, past a no trespassing sign, right to this very dark and intimidating hole in the stone, about waist high.

about waist high. I'm putting two gloves on because the bite of this bat is really something out of the scale. And then Rodrigo and his students get all geared up. They put on headlamps and grab these long-handled nets and they stoop down

and disappear into the darkness. I'm actually helping hold up a tarp against the opening so the bats can't escape. And after a little while, looking very dusty and sweaty, Rodrigo and his students pop back out. I cannot believe that that model is even flying in here. He's so excited he's out of breath

because he's found his bats. And he and his students are holding them in these bags, these checkered cloth bags. They look like they're made out of tablecloths from an Italian restaurant. And the bags are all swinging and flopping around. Okay, let's go. And they carry these bags

outside the temple, back down the steps to where they've set up a little science station out on a folding table. So we're going to process them. But I want to process first and foremost the mother. And he's so excited. He tells us this is a bat he's named Big Mama. She's this is a bat he's named Big Mama.

Rodrigo grabs one of the squiggling bat bags and very tenderly, he reaches in and he pulls out the first bat. But I'm going to wait. I have to say, even if you are a bat lover, this is a strange looking creature. It's called a woolly false vampire bat. Big teeth, big ears, big eyes, and a big nose leaf. It's got fuzzy brown fur and this sort of tall pig snout called a nose leaf. If they have this nose leaf, that means that they can carry

the food in their mouth. Rodrigo told us this is so they can echolocate while their mouths are full. They can fly around with a big rat or a mango in their mouth and still shoot these noises out of their nose leaf so they can fly through the

jungle without smashing into trees. So if you look at the nose leaf like that, it's a perfect segment of a parable. Oh, yeah. It's very directional. It's very easily directed by the bat. The bat team weighs the bat and measures its wingspan. And they punch out a little tissue sample from its wing. Ow!

And Rodrigo puts it back in the bag. And then, one by one, he pulls the other bats out of their bags. Ow! And the whole time, they keep biting the crap out of him. Don't bite me. Don't bite me. And he does not seem to mind at all. He just loves these bats so much.

Is that blood? Is that your blood or its blood? I think it's mine. I'm standing at a distance, and I'm freaked out, but also fascinated. And then... So this is the baby? Out of one of the bags, Rodrigo pulls out... It's his boy. A baby bat.

He's a boy. Oh. Oh, my God. He's so cute. It's so freaking cute. It's fresh and fuzzy. Look at the milk. It has little pink feet. In the stomach.

What? And Rodrigo flips it over to show us that you can see through the baby bat's pink belly skin, milk in its stomach that it's been nursing from its mother oh there it is because these bats are part of a little family they're a family of bats oh big mama's baby and seeing all this just unlocks my general feeling of love for all animals. These bats suddenly seem vulnerable and out of their element. Let's take them all and put them in the shade in the temple. And so when Rodrigo and his students climb back into that dark hole and put the bats back into their temple, I see the darkness a little differently. It's not only a horrifying void of death. It's also just where the bats are. Big Mama and her fuzzy little family. It's actually not even dark to the bats. I mean, yes, it's littered with bones and guano and severed mouse tails, but it's their home.

And I'm kind of curious now. I can almost maybe sort of imagine going in there myself, into the bat's world, to see the darkness with my own eyes. Maybe tomorrow. maybe tomorrow maybe did they miss the turn? No, is that them? Sam? What's happening? We're on our way to visit another bat roost with Rodrigo at a temple called Okulwits. Is there a fire up there? And on the drive there, we see a small fire

where patches of the jungle are being cleared. There's tractors and white dust everywhere. They cleared a huge amount of trees. And what we're seeing is a gigantic project There's tractors and white dust everywhere. And what we're seeing is a gigantic project that's going to change the Yucatan forever. It's called Train Maya. This railroad that will circle the whole peninsula right through the wilderness, breaking up habitats and supercharging development.

cut and leveled breaking up habitats and supercharging development perspective of the people of the whole thing is very controversial alan told me that it's creating a lot of jobs it's really helping the yucatan economy hard to understand from but rodrigo is worried about the impact of all this on the wildlife here especially of course the bats doesn't know where he's going we follow rodrigo off the main road deep into the jungle and then we hike it's so hot right now it's like a million and a half degrees hot right now it's like a million and a half degrees later monkeys but then we see it wow the temple 600 years of abandonment this one is even more ruined than the first one there are jungle plants growing right out of the stones it feels secluded and totally abandoned it's like we've slipped into some secret back pocket of the universe.

This is the temple of Ogulvitz. And as you can see, a whole wall of the temple is missing. But the bats love it here. It's shadowed, it's protected, it's cool.

It's beyond the reach of any predator. So they love it here. We all take turns peeking in there through an old doorway, whispering so we don't bother the bats. Okay, I'm going into the bat temple with Alan. The bats are up in a high corner. They're just a cluster of dark shapes hanging upside down against the gray stone.

What is this temple? I don't think anybody knows, Sam. Who's here? I don't know. Where are they now? They're dead and gone. See the ears. Do you think they're echolocating us?

I know they're echolocating. Maybe. Oh look, those two in the back, on the left here, they're getting very, very close together. They're clinging to each other. Think they love each other? Like we feel an affection, a mammal affection. They are attached to each other and they depend on each other for their survival. Beyond that, I cannot tell you that they love each other. Yeah.

Okay. Do you think I could stand in here while you catch the bats? Yeah. I kind of can't believe I just asked to stay in here. We'll sit you there. Okay. Because the bats are calm right now, but once Rodrigo starts trying to catch them... Some of them may land on you.

Okay. They will not be calm. You okay with that? Seriously? Seriously. And even though I've seen some cute bats now, I am still very afraid of them. Yeah, that's been the test.

Is that part of progress? Yeah. Can we call that progress? But I think just being around Rodrigo and his love for bats, it has made me curious. And that curiosity for this one moment just barely outweighed my fear. If they land on you, just don't move. Don't scream and run?

Don't scream and run. No screaming. No, no, no, no, no. Get him off, get him off. No, nothing like that okay rodrigo sits me down on this pile of rubble at the back of the chamber and the students outside wrapped the whole chamber up in tarps so we're sealed in even if i wanted to run away screaming, I couldn't.

I'm stuck here until Rodrigo is done. And it is dark. It's cool and musty and it smells like ancient stone. Okay, we're ready. But after a minute, my eyes start to adjust and I can just barely see the bats up in the corner, these dark shapes against the ceiling. I see Rodrigo kind of sneak over and reach up his long net and try to catch a bat. And that's when the motion starts. The bat motion. The flitting and darting. You know, bat stuff.

flitting and darting, you know, bat stuff. The bats are flying around like nightmare confetti. I'm scared. And I'm just sitting here, frozen, trying to stay calm, dissociating. And I found myself thinking, weirdly, of my father. Because I realized I was sitting in this dark bat chamber and I was wearing my dad's socks, which I inherited when he died. And I remembered this flash of a memory from when I was a kid.

It was the first time I ever saw a bat in my life. After my parents got divorced, my dad used to love to take us to caves when he had us for the weekend or something. He would take us on tours or exploring on our own. It was kind of our special place outside of the normal world. And I remembered being maybe five years old and deep in this cave when suddenly there was this motion out of nowhere and it was bats. And one of them flew so close to my face. And I remembered seeing its teeth and the little pig nose. And the funny thing is, I don't think I was scared. Because my father was right there with me. I was just interested.

It actually seemed amazing that there was this whole other form of life deep down in the earth. And here we were crossing paths. And now 40 years later, sitting in this dark temple in the Yucatan, I was just kind of swimming in this memory when suddenly I look up and Rodrigo and his student have caught all the bats and they're holding their little checkered bags and the chamber is suddenly unwrapped and the light comes flooding back in

and we're back in the daylight. And it occurs to me that maybe my fear of bats isn't really about bats. Maybe it's more about what they represent. All the deeper, darker stuff. The unknown. The void. Death. You can't shut the door without a tree in it.

You want me to go move forward a bit? Oh, I'm jungle tired. I'm so tired. And all this bat family talk and the memories and socks and impermanence, it's got me thinking about my family, about my daughter Greta, who's off at college, and my son Beckett, who turned 16 while I was on this trip. And I didn't think it would really bother me not to be there for his birthday, but now it really does. Your boy, your big boy. And Alan can relate because he found out this morning that his baby daughter, Maria, took her first steps. Everything is just rushing forward without us. at the same time. What are you going to do? Your boy's all grown up.

I don't know. I can't even imagine. I cannot imagine. It sounds devastating. Yeah. I mean, and not, like,

joyous and wonderful and they have their lives and then they'll come back and you'll get, like, you know. Yeah, there's all that yeah there's like there's the part where it's an ending and there's the part where it's just wonderful development and like if it went any different that would be bad but yeah i don't know. Then you die. And then everyone forgets that you existed.

And then your civilization is a big husk of ruins. Wait, you took it too far. What? I guess. I mean, I guess. I mean, I'm looking at those Mayan temples and I'm thinking like everything dies like the forests things are dying all around us animals are dying and You're gonna die and both of our dads died and like everyone is gonna have a dead dad Like that's what it means to be alive is that eventually you have a dead dad

Unless you die first, but then there's the fact that it was like my individual dad, Peter Anderson, who died. And I have to sit around thinking about that all the time. Because he was my individual dad. Do you think about it a lot? Yeah, I think about it every day. Really? Yeah.

He was a really affectionate, sweet, kind man. I took a bunch of his clothes after he died, and so I'm always wearing his socks or his raincoat or his fingerless gloves all winter long and all kinds of stuff. It's curious. So I'm always thinking about him. I think about him every day.

We drive on through the jungle toward our last stop with Rodrigo, a very special place that the Bat team has told us is going to blow our minds. And it's basically the last place I could have imagined myself going to before this trip. We are 43 minutes away. Because even the name of this place sounds like a horror movie. It's called the Bat Volcano. He's afraid of certain things. And we are going there after the break.

Uh, thieves, robbers. Robbers robbing you. Yeah. Why are you not afraid of robbers? They don't have any names. I thought... Roberts. Let me tell you a story about a hole. A deep, dark, intimidating hole in the earth, in the Yucatan, where thousands of years ago, the limestone collapsed, leaving this big canyon with a cave at the bottom.

They call it the Bat Volcano. Welcome, guys. Thank you. So stay on this side of the rope. Because every night, millions of bats erupt out of this hole to fly off into the darkness. Tell me what we're looking at. We're looking at a gaping maw in the center of the earth.

Yeah, we're looking into the throat of planet Earth. How far down does it go? Hard to tell. The scale of it is so big. A few hundred feet? Rodrigo insisted that we see the bat volcano. Ten miles? I don't know. He wanted us to feel not just what it's like to see a few bats or a family of bats, but to be completely outnumbered, fully immersed in bats. Plus, there's a whole crowd of other people because this place is kind of a tourist attraction.

Like 30 meters long, 6 meters high. It's still light outside, so nothing has started yet. We're just staring down, waiting. I think this is going to be impressive. It feels like the bat capacity for this cave is large. And then the sky clouds over, and it starts to rain on us. A real tropical downpour.

There's no shelter, so we're just standing there getting soaked. And I ask Rodrigo, is the rain going to stop the bats from flying? And he says, absolutely nothing will stop these bats from flying. So we stand there, sopping wet, waiting. Oh, there we go. First bat.

And finally we see the tiniest little flitting in this giant bowl of the canyon. It's almost nothing, just a speck of motion. And then a couple more specks and then a few more thickening it's thickening it's sort of like watching popcorn really close there's like one kernel and then two and then all of a sudden a million kernels they're passing through you that these bats, just infinite bats coming out. It's another species. Different sizes, different species.

Short and broad wings. But they're all sort of moving together like this huge superorganism. Oh, my God. They're just really getting thicker and thicker over on that side. And soon, the whole universe is bats. It's really hypnotic.

I feel completely dwarfed. They're coming really close to my head. And in that moment, I feel the strangest feeling. Do you feel scared? Uh-uh. Do you feel scared? It's absolutely not. I think it's extremely delicate and beautiful.

It's really beautiful. I feel soothed by the bats. I'm not scared at all. Bats are passing right in front of my face, through my legs. They're shooting through the tiny space between me and Alan. It's really cold in here. Yeah. through my legs. They're shooting through the tiny space between me and Alan. And there's a crowd of people around us watching and we are all completely silent. There's this reverence in the air.

Cover your eyes. I don't know how many thousands Cover your eyes. I don't know how many thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of bats flew right by me that night, within arm's reach. None of these bats ever came close to touching me, but I could feel their attention on me. And I felt this absolute sense of trust. All I had to do was stand there and watch. And these millions of bat wings flapping, it sounded like rain, which reminded me of Oregon, where I'm from, where my dad lived. And then, out of the silence, I hear a tiny voice calling out. A little girl calling for her papa,

which is what I called my dad, Papa. Which is what I called my dad, Papa. And I thought about all the bats we'd seen, and the bat families, holding each other, huddling together close, hanging from the ceiling like a bunch of bananas. Beautiful.

I'm still here is just hang like a bunch of bananas close to all of the creatures that I love. My friend Alan, my little family, Walnut. Until one of these days, maybe soon, maybe a long time from now, the darkness will take me. a long time from now, the darkness will take me. And I will spread my wings and fly off into some other world that I don't understand.

And at least at this moment, standing on the edge of this giant hole, immersed in this living cloud of bats, that actually sounds just fine. To be continued... This episode was produced by Caitlin Roberts with help from Crystal Duhame and reported by me, Sam Anderson. It was edited by Wendy Dorr. Our executive producers are Paula Schumann and Larissa Anderson. Engineering by Marion Lozano. Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell.

Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado. Special thanks to Jake Silverstein, Sasha Weiss, and Sam Dolnik. Also to Rodrigo Medellin and his wonderful students, Javier Torres Cervantes, Monica Izquierdo-Suzan, Angel Uriel Torres Alcantara, and my good old buddy Alan Page for finally taking this trip with me. You can listen to all of our episodes wherever you get podcasts or visit our website at nytimes.com slash animal. I'm Sam Anderson. I am Sam Anderson. Thanks for listening.