Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show Bats Bats, Bats, Bats, Bat Bats,
Speaker 1: We're getting scary and spooky, but not really with a
Speaker 1: special bat episode. Bats may not be the horrible Halloween
Speaker 1: monster that they're made out to be, but they's still
Speaker 1: one of my favorite orders of animals in the world. Then,
Speaker 1: just for more fun, we'll talk about a who's list
Speaker 1: of halloweeny critters and why they're so special. Joining me
Speaker 1: today to talk about the most incredible unusual bat species,
Speaker 1: as well as separating bat fact from bat. Libel is
Speaker 1: science journalist and co author of the new book Atlas
Speaker 1: Obscure Wildlife Karajaimo.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Hi Katie. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I have had you on before, and I'm a big fan,
Speaker 1: especially for someone who writes the podcast and then also
Speaker 1: likes to read the news for maybe ideas for my podcast,
Speaker 1: and I have definitely your articles have definitely inspired me
Speaker 1: before and writing my episode, and so I feel like
Speaker 1: we have sort of come full circle now you are
Speaker 1: here talking about this incredible book that you've written that
Speaker 1: is such a comprehensive journey through all the weirdest and
Speaker 1: coolest animals in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. This book was so fun to work on.
Speaker 2: I did really feel like I got to take almost
Speaker 2: everything I've learned in like ten years of chasing down
Speaker 2: weird creature facts and put it all in one place.
Speaker 1: It's so good. I look, I'm not benefiting in any
Speaker 1: way from promoting this book. I want people to know
Speaker 1: that I have no financial interest in this, not benefiting
Speaker 1: at all other than like sucking up to Kara. But like,
Speaker 1: it is genuinely a beautiful book. Like it's got beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful illustrations and photographs, and the writing is really wonderful.
Speaker 1: It gives you such a good sort of sense of
Speaker 1: all of the most incredible facts about these animals. Today
Speaker 1: we are going to focus on the spooky ones, namely bats.
Speaker 1: I don't make my love of bats a secret. They
Speaker 1: are incredible. I find them all cute, even the ones
Speaker 1: with the weird sort of maze like faces. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but before we get into sort of specific bats, I
Speaker 1: think that it's always good to go through kind of
Speaker 1: the the bat myths and the bat facts because they're
Speaker 1: one of these animals that like every culture, every mythology
Speaker 1: has bats in it, and usually they're spooky. Not always,
Speaker 1: but often they're kind of seen as this kind of
Speaker 1: spooky thing, especially around Halloween, right, I mean, obviously we
Speaker 1: also love them around Halloween. I just got this these uh,
Speaker 1: these cookies that were shaped like adorable little bats. So
Speaker 1: I think that we are becoming as a society more
Speaker 1: loving of bats. But there are still some sort of
Speaker 1: old wives tales about bats, and the biggest one, the
Speaker 1: number one one, is bats sucking your blood. The whole
Speaker 1: idea that bats are blood suckers, they're vampires, and they
Speaker 1: want they would happily suck a human's blood if they
Speaker 1: landed on you. And so, Kara, is that really true?
Speaker 1: Like do bats really want to suck up our blood
Speaker 1: like a bunch of little adorable nose varatus.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I never want to speak for
Speaker 2: every single bat. That would be a presumpious, but I
Speaker 2: do think that most bats do not want to suck
Speaker 2: blood at all. Bats eat a lot of bugs and insects,
Speaker 2: They eat a lot of fruit, they eat a lot
Speaker 2: of nectar. I think there are a few species of
Speaker 2: they're called vampire bats that drink the blood of mostly
Speaker 2: like other different mammals that aren't people. That's about you're
Speaker 2: understanding too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you're spot on. There's always three species of vampire
Speaker 1: bats that are still in existence, and none of them
Speaker 1: really exclusively drink human blood. Two of the species really
Speaker 1: rely more on bird blood, and one of the species
Speaker 1: does rely on mammalian blood, But it's usually live stock, pigs, cows, etc.
Speaker 1: And the only times they do drink human blood, it's
Speaker 1: kind of just opportunistic. It's kind of a bit of
Speaker 1: an accident. It's usually a human who's working in very
Speaker 1: closet of association with the animals that the vampire bats
Speaker 1: usually do drink blood from. So maybe a farmer living
Speaker 1: somewhere really rural, who sleeps near where his chickens are
Speaker 1: or where the pigs and the cows are, and maybe
Speaker 1: a vampire bat's gonna slip into his bedroom and get
Speaker 1: confused and take a little sip of human blood. But
Speaker 1: they certainly do not exanguinate anything. They ever drink the
Speaker 1: blood of an animal, so you know, including humans, but
Speaker 1: they really don't kill by drinking blood. There's the white
Speaker 1: winged vampire bat, the hairy leged vampire bat. Those are
Speaker 1: the two that prefer bird blood mostly, and then there's
Speaker 1: the common vampire bat that's the one that drinks mammalian blood.
Speaker 1: And they really don't kill their hosts. They're more of
Speaker 1: a they're not really predators, they're more like a parasite.
Speaker 1: And when they do kill, it is completely accidental. It
Speaker 1: is through the transmission of disease. And that is kind
Speaker 1: of a I mean, that's kind of another thing about bats, right,
Speaker 1: They do sometimes carry rabies, and they can transmit rabies.
Speaker 1: It's not I don't think it's as common as people
Speaker 1: believe based on sort of the idea that if bats
Speaker 1: around you, you're gonna get rabies from this bat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'm actually a funny person to talk
Speaker 2: to about this because I did, when I was young,
Speaker 2: have a rabbit bat in my house. Oops.
Speaker 1: I did have to.
Speaker 2: Murder it with the dad so that we could test,
Speaker 2: and it did have rabies and I had to get
Speaker 2: the raby shots and everything. But having gone through that,
Speaker 2: I feel maybe qualified to say most bats are not
Speaker 2: going to put you through that experience, I think, right,
Speaker 2: I was looking into it, and it seems like of
Speaker 2: all the animals. Bats have rabies more than others. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but not most of them don't. Like the vast vast
Speaker 2: majority of them do not have rabies. That's right. Especially
Speaker 2: if you're encountering them in their own like homes or areas,
Speaker 2: you don't have to worry about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I mean the reason that I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry you had that experience, but one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that it happens where it's like it seems like so
Speaker 1: many of them have rabies is the ones that we
Speaker 1: do encounter, the ones that end up in our homes
Speaker 1: or that you see on the ground, they're just much
Speaker 1: more likely to be sick because they don't want to
Speaker 1: be there. They don't necessarily want to be in your house.
Speaker 1: They're scared of you, they want to leave. They're not
Speaker 1: going to be on the ground normally, that's unless they're
Speaker 1: I mean, it is true that vampire bats do sometimes
Speaker 1: hop along the ground to latch on to their host,
Speaker 1: but in general, a bat's not going to be just
Speaker 1: lying there waiting for a person to scoop them up.
Speaker 1: They're scared, they're they're wary, and they would fly away
Speaker 1: or try to escape, and if they don't if they're
Speaker 1: in your house and they're sick, that just you kind
Speaker 1: of have a biased sample, right, because these are the
Speaker 1: bats that are sick, these are the ones that are impacted.
Speaker 1: They're sick enough to you know, get confused, fly into
Speaker 1: your house and not try to escape. And so that's why.
Speaker 1: So like, it is important if you find a bat
Speaker 1: in your house to uh, you know, try to collect it,
Speaker 1: turn it into your local animal control so that it
Speaker 1: can be tested, especially if you think you've been bitten,
Speaker 1: because yes, it is true they do occasionally carry rabies.
Speaker 1: It's also important not to handle bats. If you find one,
Speaker 1: don't pick it up, leave it alone, and the so like,
Speaker 1: if you do, you know, like, if you do have
Speaker 1: a bat in your house, the best thing is to
Speaker 1: call animal control and follow their instructions. But if you're
Speaker 1: working with bats, right, Like, people who actually work with
Speaker 1: bats in the wild, they all get inoculated for various diseases,
Speaker 1: not only to protect themselves but to protect the bats.
Speaker 1: They use protective equipment. But like a lot of times,
Speaker 1: like they'll be working with a bat that's nectivorous, you know,
Speaker 1: bat that drinks nectar, so it's not even going to
Speaker 1: bite them. Right, It's just like, whoa, what is happening
Speaker 1: to me? I am being held by someone. All I
Speaker 1: want is to stick my really long tongue in some
Speaker 1: delicious plants. So yeah, bats are actually really sweet, and
Speaker 1: even vampire bats who have this terrible reputation, are really
Speaker 1: really sweet. They live in close proximity with each other.
Speaker 1: They live in these really tight and it sort of
Speaker 1: kinship groups, and they will even share blood meals with
Speaker 1: each other. By it's a little gross, they'll regurgitate blood
Speaker 1: into each other's mouths, but they do that with their
Speaker 1: kin with their families, with their and sometimes even with
Speaker 1: friends like bats that are unrelated to them, but that
Speaker 1: with whom they have formed a relationship and mutual trust
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, you feed me sometimes, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to feed you sometimes. And it's really important because
Speaker 1: their metabolism is so so fast that if they miss
Speaker 1: a few meals that can be fatal for them. So
Speaker 1: the fact that they kind of have this social safety
Speaker 1: net of other bats who will give them blood meals
Speaker 1: as long as they also reciprocate is is really sweet.
Speaker 1: It's they definitely makes them seem less scary and evil
Speaker 1: and more just like they're a bunch of little guys
Speaker 1: just trying to help each other out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's friendship goals. I think if you and your
Speaker 2: friends can't share a blood meal, then you know.
Speaker 1: Right right, yeah, I you know, it's like sometimes you
Speaker 1: got to pick up the tab and sometimes you got
Speaker 1: to regurgitate a little bit of blood into your friend's mouths.
Speaker 1: There's another bat myth, the myth that bats want to
Speaker 1: make nests in your hair, and this is categorically untrue.
Speaker 1: They do not.
Speaker 2: All these myths are like, sorry to interrupt you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: feel like they're very they're very like us centric. You know,
Speaker 2: we're just thinking like, oh, bats want to drink our blood,
Speaker 2: bats want to give us rab these bats want to
Speaker 2: make nests in our hair. It's not about us.
Speaker 1: We should get over ourselves. Yeah, we're not the main
Speaker 1: characters in these bats lives. Yeah, they don't. They don't
Speaker 1: care about our hair. They're not going to make nests
Speaker 1: in our hair. If they ever wind up in someone's hair,
Speaker 1: it's an accident, or they do see that you've tried
Speaker 1: to cut your own bangs and they're like, oh honey, no,
Speaker 1: So they don't really make nests in general, there is
Speaker 1: a type of bat that definitely doesn't use hair, but
Speaker 1: it uses leaves to make homes, which you did talk
Speaker 1: about in your book. These tint making they are so cute, Kiara, I.
Speaker 2: Know, I love them. I actually they're the very first
Speaker 2: animal in the whole book because I love them so much,
Speaker 2: and I thought they were really good get like an
Speaker 2: entryway into what the book is all about. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they's so I mean, there are lots of different kinds
Speaker 2: of tent making bats, and they're all so cute and
Speaker 2: when you see pictures of them, it's just like a
Speaker 2: bunch of little marshmallows in a leaf. Yes, but it's cool, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we don't always think about animals in general as having
Speaker 2: a ton of agency, which is very very silly, because
Speaker 2: you know, we all built this world together, all the
Speaker 2: living inhabitants of it. But these bats, they really they
Speaker 2: show that clearly. They like engineer these leaves to become
Speaker 2: shelters for themselves. Yeah, so they'll like nibble on the
Speaker 2: ribs of a leaf until it kind of like collapses
Speaker 2: into a certain shape. Different species make different shapes. Some
Speaker 2: scientists have kind of like taxonomized the different leaf shapes,
Speaker 2: which I think sounds like a really fun way to
Speaker 2: spend time a scientists.
Speaker 1: But they love, they love care.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the leaves they like give the bat shelter.
Speaker 2: They sort of like rustle if a predator is nearby,
Speaker 2: which is really useful. They can like collect water for
Speaker 2: them or protect them from rain. And yeah, mostly just
Speaker 2: the pictures like go Google tent.
Speaker 1: Making bats so cute, so cute. There's the I think
Speaker 1: one is called the Honduran leaf nosed bat, and it
Speaker 1: is so adorable. It like when you said marshmallow. They
Speaker 1: do literally look like little marshmallows because they have this
Speaker 1: white fur and they're like these little puffballs. You look
Speaker 1: in and they're all kind of all get nestled together
Speaker 1: like a bunch of hamsters inside these leaves, and it
Speaker 1: is adorable. So onto the third bat, big bat. Myth
Speaker 1: it is that bats are blind. They are not blind.
Speaker 1: They do have functional vision. Some rely on their vision
Speaker 1: and hearing, and some also rely on echolocation, which is
Speaker 1: a form of sonar. Essentially, like they send out in
Speaker 1: a pulse a very high pitch squeak, and then when
Speaker 1: it comes back to them, it bounces off various obstacles,
Speaker 1: prey hits those huge ears and then they use those
Speaker 1: returning sounds to be able to navigate. But generally speaking,
Speaker 1: their eyes also function, so they're not blind. They might
Speaker 1: not use their site too much, perhaps at night, but
Speaker 1: they can use that echolocation. In species that have the
Speaker 1: echolocation to navigate really really well. And one reason I
Speaker 1: think people think that they're blind is that they can
Speaker 1: fly sort of erratically, But that's not because they don't
Speaker 1: know where they're going. They're in this delicate dance where
Speaker 1: they are locating the precise position of their prey. So
Speaker 1: you have say a moth or a mosquito, it's flying around,
Speaker 1: going every which way, and this bat is sort of
Speaker 1: narrowing in on it. It's more like a panther kind
Speaker 1: of like stalking its prey, but it's doing so in
Speaker 1: like three dimensions, right, So that's why it looks really erratic.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like flying. It looks kind of disorganized,
Speaker 1: but really it is trying to hone in on this prey.
Speaker 1: And they eat in these the species of bats that
Speaker 1: are insectivores, they're incredible. They eat so many mosquitoes, so
Speaker 1: many insects that are actually quite dangerous to US humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I learned something really cool the other day reading
Speaker 2: up on the recent bat literature. There was a study
Speaker 2: that came out, I think actually by an economist that
Speaker 2: figured out that in regions of the US where white
Speaker 2: nose syndrome, which we haven't talked about yet, but it's
Speaker 2: this very bad bat disease that makes bats really sick, yes,
Speaker 2: often kills them. In regions of the US where bats
Speaker 2: have white no disease, and where there is white nos
Speaker 2: disease and therefore fewer bats, infant mortality is higher, potentially
Speaker 2: because farmers have to use more pesticides to kill insecting
Speaker 2: because the bats are not eating the insects, and the
Speaker 2: pesticides are bad for people, especially babies. So it's just
Speaker 2: this really amazing attempt to quantify all the things that
Speaker 2: bats actually do positively for us, even though, like you said,
Speaker 2: sometimes people can get a little sidetracked by these ideas
Speaker 2: of the negative aspects of bats that may or may
Speaker 2: not even be true, but they're actually so helpful to
Speaker 2: human society.
Speaker 1: This is great news, and it's wonderful to see. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not good news that bats are dying of white nose,
Speaker 1: and then that hurts babies. That's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: It's great news that this is a study written by
Speaker 1: an economist. Because my husband is an economist, and for
Speaker 1: the longest time I have been trying to convince him
Speaker 1: that bats are cute. And now that we have an
Speaker 1: actual economic study that's shows how beneficial bats are, maybe
Speaker 1: I can finally convince them, Like, look, even economists agree
Speaker 1: that bats are great and adorable and wonderful.
Speaker 2: Ten out of ten economists agree, yes that we need bats.
Speaker 2: I'm going to send you the study. Yeah, I was
Speaker 2: super psych you. It was the coolest study I've read
Speaker 2: in a long time.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Definitely. I'm definitely like just scooting that over
Speaker 1: during during dinner, going like, well, here you go. This
Speaker 1: is this is my proof that that bats are great
Speaker 1: and you should love them. Yeah, I mean that is
Speaker 1: really incredible. I think that it is to use sort
Speaker 1: of like another I guess sort of economics terms, there
Speaker 1: are trade offs, right, Like, bats do potentially present an
Speaker 1: issue when it comes to disease, but they also prevent
Speaker 1: a ton of disease, prevent a ton of uh sort
Speaker 1: of transmission of say, like you know, mosquito born disease,
Speaker 1: and help help us with things like pollination, with insect control.
Speaker 1: Uh So it is you know when when we kind
Speaker 1: of look at something in just one dimension of like, oh,
Speaker 1: well some of them have rabies, it's like, yes, that's true,
Speaker 1: and you should be careful. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the species itself is a negative for humans or for
Speaker 1: the environment. In fact, they're very much a net positive.
Speaker 2: Yes, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: And I mean I think, you know, obviously, I think
Speaker 1: people's awareness of zoonotic diseases has increased for some reason.
Speaker 1: But it is true that bats can be vectors for
Speaker 1: novel zoonotic diseases. It is not because bats are uniquely dirty, aggressive,
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It is due to some characteristics
Speaker 1: of bats that are actually pretty cool and make them
Speaker 1: quite amazing and sympathetic. One is that they have incredible
Speaker 1: immune systems to fight off pathogens. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: theories about why they seem to be able to live
Speaker 1: with sort of relatively high viral loads and not seem
Speaker 1: to get sick. One of them is that because flight
Speaker 1: requires so much energy, so such a high metabolism, that
Speaker 1: somehow they have evolved this trade off where their their
Speaker 1: passive immune system is really strong. And then they're also
Speaker 1: able to just kind of be in this kind of
Speaker 1: truce almost with pathogens where the pathogen lives in their
Speaker 1: bodies but doesn't make them sick. But this means that
Speaker 1: they can carry diseases without dying, which could also mean
Speaker 1: that a pathogen could mutate inside them and that could
Speaker 1: be the origin point for a new zoonotic disease. Another
Speaker 1: theory for why they may be more likely to generate
Speaker 1: these zoonotic diseases is that they hibernate for incredible periods
Speaker 1: of time. They sort of go into this stasis where
Speaker 1: their body system slow way down, they can survive the cold,
Speaker 1: and this may allow certain pathogens to stay inside their
Speaker 1: bodies for long periods of times during cold weather. So
Speaker 1: essentially the bats are kind of like little storage centers
Speaker 1: for the pathogens because the bats are able to last
Speaker 1: such a long time during winter and that their bodies,
Speaker 1: their metabolism, and their body systems have slowed down, so
Speaker 1: everything's kind of in stasis. And then the other reason
Speaker 1: that they can spread diseases that they're really social. They
Speaker 1: love to a lot of species live in these huge
Speaker 1: communities where they're all kind of living in these tight
Speaker 1: spaces like a little city, a bat city. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, they're very socially. They share the vampire.
Speaker 1: Bat species share blood meals, you have a lot of socialization.
Speaker 1: They're quite usually they're pretty friendly with each other. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of infighting that happens with bat species.
Speaker 1: But if we hate bats for that, we should also
Speaker 1: hate ourselves because that's a very human trait, right. We
Speaker 1: also live in densely packed cities and are really social
Speaker 1: with each other and give each other hugs and all
Speaker 1: these things. And so it's like, well, yeah, it's true,
Speaker 1: but if we sea bats is gross and dirty for that,
Speaker 1: than humans are the same way, and personally, I don't
Speaker 1: think that is grosser dirty. I think that's just what
Speaker 1: a social species is going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean the more we talk about it,
Speaker 2: the more I'm thinking about how bats actually are a
Speaker 2: lot like people. Yes, especially in this social aspect. They
Speaker 2: do seem to really just love spending time together, taking
Speaker 2: care of each other, hanging out literally literally, Yeah, have
Speaker 2: you seen.
Speaker 1: That video of It's the bats? Who are I think
Speaker 1: they're in some sort of They might be in a
Speaker 1: rehabilitation center. But they're like hanging from a cage, but
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of them. And then someone flipped the
Speaker 1: video so it looks like they're standing up and then
Speaker 1: set it to music and it looks like they're all
Speaker 1: doing sort of like, you know, like sort of a
Speaker 1: goth like rave where everyone's kind of dancing, but in
Speaker 1: a sort of like yeah, like a sulky like I'm
Speaker 1: not really dancing kind of dances. Perfect. It's an amazing video. Well,
Speaker 1: we are going to take a quick break, but when
Speaker 1: we get back, we are going to talk about some
Speaker 1: incredible bat species, some of Kara's favorite bats. I'm nominating
Speaker 1: you too to do this, but these are from these
Speaker 1: are from your new books, so let's talk about it
Speaker 1: after the break. All right, So, Kara, you have written
Speaker 1: about a lot of bat species and you I really
Speaker 1: love this sort of curated list of your your picks
Speaker 1: of bats. I'm not going to say necessarily they're your
Speaker 1: favorite bats, because maybe that's too I don't know all
Speaker 1: bats are great, but yeah, let's let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: The one that is really really interesting to me, this
Speaker 1: is something I did not know. It's the library bats
Speaker 1: in Portugal. Could you talk a little bit about those?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, absolutely. First, I just want to say, you know,
Speaker 2: if I could have made the book all bats, I
Speaker 2: might have done it, although maybe I.
Speaker 1: Could still oop soul bats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I also want to say I didn't think
Speaker 2: about this until we started talking, but this book has
Speaker 2: so many amazing pieces in it from contributing writers who pitched,
Speaker 2: you know, their favorite animals and plants and other species
Speaker 2: and wrote about them. But I realized I kept all
Speaker 2: the bats for myself. All the bats in this book,
Speaker 2: I wrote about them.
Speaker 1: It's smart.
Speaker 2: I love them that much. These library that's are really cool.
Speaker 2: So there are a couple of different libraries in Portugal.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily trust myself to pronounce them correctly.
Speaker 1: That's okay, I pronounced not. I pronounced nothing correctly on
Speaker 1: this show.
Speaker 2: You go on, Okay, the Joanine Library at the University
Speaker 2: of Coymbra in Coumbra, Portugal. I'm so sorry to anyone
Speaker 2: who knows about Portugal who's listening to this, But basically,
Speaker 2: there are really really old books in there, and old
Speaker 2: books are often made with things like glue and leather
Speaker 2: and stuff that bugs really like to eat. Like you know,
Speaker 2: everybody's sort of bookworms. There are a lot of different
Speaker 2: kinds of bugs that will sort of destroy old books
Speaker 2: by just nibbling on the binding glue or whatever. In
Speaker 2: this library, there are a bunch of bats that live
Speaker 2: there that eat the bugs at night. And this has
Speaker 2: worked so well for so long that it's kind of
Speaker 2: just like it's almost like they work there, Like the
Speaker 2: librarians are used to them. Yeah, they sort of like
Speaker 2: welcome them. They have these really old like leather what
Speaker 2: would you call them, sort of just like roll up
Speaker 2: sheets that they unroll on the tables at night, and
Speaker 2: the furniture, like the fancy furniture, so that when the
Speaker 2: bats poop, it's like nice sale, they can just roll
Speaker 2: them up again.
Speaker 1: The chairs hard become your toilets, and we welcome you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And like it's this amazing ornate library and
Speaker 2: it's kind of the it's the kind of thing where
Speaker 2: like if you were watching like a cartoon about an
Speaker 2: old library, like maybe a couple of bats would flutter by,
Speaker 2: maybe the impression like, oh this is oldy, this is drafty, spooky,
Speaker 2: but it's actually like no, it's like a collaboration. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the bats like they go out at night. Oh sorry,
Speaker 2: they at night they fly around the library and they
Speaker 2: will eat the bugs and then they'll like fly out
Speaker 2: the windows and drink from the river, and then they
Speaker 2: come back all day and roost and nobody really like
Speaker 2: sees them when they're roosting. And if you want to
Speaker 2: see them as a visitor, you have to go to
Speaker 2: one of the sort of like cool night concerts that
Speaker 2: they have and then you might see them.
Speaker 1: Kind of wow, they have nights.
Speaker 2: But everybody knows they're there and every Yeah, they have
Speaker 2: like library concerts.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fantastic, Which is cool.
Speaker 2: Do all the bats have like there?
Speaker 1: Do the bats all have like little earplugs they put
Speaker 1: in when when there's trying to sleep?
Speaker 2: I know, I mean it's kind of cool to think about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wonder how they're like sonar like interacts with music.
Speaker 2: I've never thought about that. Yeah, you know, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's definitely like noise pollution in the ocean definitely impacts
Speaker 1: the echo location of cetacean like whales and dolphins, So
Speaker 1: I'd imagine that that can be similar with bats, where
Speaker 1: where noise pollution can impact their echo location. In this case,
Speaker 1: the library sounds like chill enough that they've accommodated the
Speaker 1: bats enough that I think it's okay for there to
Speaker 1: be the occasional concert.
Speaker 2: And the bats.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, just like yeah, all right, all right, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of bugs at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, they like, yeah, they really like them. The
Speaker 2: guy I interviewed called them quote unquote honorary librarians, and
Speaker 2: they like replaced the big library doors in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: and they less little gaps that the bats used to
Speaker 2: get in and out like they wanted, they wanted them
Speaker 2: to come back. So that's so I love that.
Speaker 1: That's so incredible. I love that so much. I like humanity.
Speaker 1: I don't I think that it's nice that we have
Speaker 1: civilization because I live in it and I like it.
Speaker 1: So I do really love examples where we have figured
Speaker 1: out a way to coexist with animals that like, yes,
Speaker 1: there is a bit of inherent tension, I guess, right,
Speaker 1: because like you could imagine that, say, if these bats
Speaker 1: were in this library, if someone didn't really know what
Speaker 1: they were doing, they'd be like, well this, we got
Speaker 1: to seal up the library, we got to keep them out, right,
Speaker 1: But when we can figure out that Hey, actually this
Speaker 1: is really good for the books, and like, what's a
Speaker 1: little bat guano if it means keeping our books safe
Speaker 1: from insects and having this cool kind of symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: between the library and the bats, and yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: really wonderful. I love that there's another sort of a
Speaker 1: there's another ability that bats have very important, perhaps even
Speaker 1: more important than books, and that's tequila making sure we
Speaker 1: get to feel it. If you want to talk about
Speaker 1: the sort of bat relationship to the production of tequila.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So. This is a bat called the lesser
Speaker 2: long nose bat, like you were talking about. They're also
Speaker 2: a communal bat. They mostly like to hang out altogether.
Speaker 2: But every year, I think it might have to do
Speaker 2: with their age, like a certain proportion of the female
Speaker 2: bats go on this really cool migration from Mexico up
Speaker 2: into California and the southwest US, and then they all
Speaker 2: have their pups together in the.
Speaker 1: Best group, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a mom's group. It's a traveling mom's group.
Speaker 2: And then the pups you know, get a little bit
Speaker 2: bigger and older and more self sufficient, and then they
Speaker 2: all fly together back to Mexico, but along the way
Speaker 2: they do all this incredible important pollination. So you were
Speaker 2: mentioning before that a lot of bats, all they really
Speaker 2: want to do is like unscroll their long tongue into
Speaker 2: a flower. Yeah, so that's like this kind of bat.
Speaker 2: Is that kind of bat? They're going from often like
Speaker 2: cactus or agave flowers to a gave flowers and they're
Speaker 2: they're drinking the nectar and they're pollinating along the way.
Speaker 2: So just like we know this about bees, especially, like
Speaker 2: plants really need pollinators in order to reproduce and to
Speaker 2: produce fruits and the other like structures of the plant
Speaker 2: that we like the most, and the agave plant only
Speaker 2: I think gets pollinated by these bats. So yes, we
Speaker 2: really need them to do this so that we can
Speaker 2: get agave products that we enjoy, like tequila, as you said.
Speaker 2: So that's another very important relationship between human culture and bats.
Speaker 1: Critical one might say, Uh, did you talk to have
Speaker 1: any chance you talked to doctor Rodrigo Medeian about.
Speaker 2: These I did, Yeah, I talked to him. He's a
Speaker 2: great little piece. Yeah, he was really cool, and a
Speaker 2: lot of people were working really hard to tie the
Speaker 2: story of these bats to you know, the story of tequila.
Speaker 2: And help people understand that they are intertwined. I think
Speaker 2: he's doing a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it's really important. The next bat that I
Speaker 1: wanted you to talk about was the uh, the kind
Speaker 1: of classic thing, right, like the idea of you go
Speaker 1: under a spooky bridge and then there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: bats there and people are you know, used to be
Speaker 1: afraid of this kind of phenomenon. But can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about these bridge bats?
Speaker 2: Yes, another incredible bat positivity tale. So these are the
Speaker 2: Congress Avenue bridge bats in Austin, Texas. I love these bats.
Speaker 2: I actually wrote my master's thesis about these bats because
Speaker 2: I was so taken by them. But basically, yeah, so
Speaker 2: Mexican retail bats. They live in really big colonies, like
Speaker 2: a lot of bats living colonies like we've been discussing,
Speaker 2: but their colonies are huge. And basically what happened was
Speaker 2: there's a big group of them that was living in
Speaker 2: a cave in the woods near Austin. But then you know,
Speaker 2: somebody developed the woods and got rid of the cave
Speaker 2: and they had nowhere to go, so they went into
Speaker 2: the city and I think first they were roosting in
Speaker 2: like a high school or something, and people were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's not good. They drove them out of the high school.
Speaker 1: They were given too many people wedgies, too many swirlies,
Speaker 1: shoving all the nerds.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, they're definitely jocks. They have so much
Speaker 2: athletic ability. It just it messes with their judgment. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah. They went under this bridge right in the
Speaker 2: middle of the city called the Congress Avenue Bridge, and
Speaker 2: they were like, this is the perfect place for us
Speaker 2: to live. It's right over the water, there's bugs every night,
Speaker 2: we can just swoop around. We're living our like an
Speaker 2: incredible life here together. And the people in the city
Speaker 2: were kind of like, I don't know about this. I mean,
Speaker 2: as we were saying, there's so many bad associations with bats.
Speaker 2: But this group called Bat Conservation International was also getting
Speaker 2: off the ground at that time, and they did a
Speaker 2: lot of education and very quickly people realized like, actually,
Speaker 2: these bats are so cool and you can stand on
Speaker 2: the bridge and watch them do their incredible thing every night,
Speaker 2: and it's so like peaceful and beautiful. Meanwhile, they're eating
Speaker 2: all the bugs that would be eating you if they
Speaker 2: weren't doing it. It's such a win win So what
Speaker 2: has happened is the bats have become like a big
Speaker 2: cultural property of Austin. You know, like people say, keep
Speaker 2: Austin weird. It's got this like quirky repuation as being
Speaker 2: a city for artists and people who want to do things,
Speaker 2: you know, a little differently, and the bats kind of
Speaker 2: represent that. They've become a big symbol for Austin. There's
Speaker 2: a big statue. If you go shopping in town, a
Speaker 2: lot of stores have a lot of bat memorabilia and
Speaker 2: like art and stuff. And I think it's it's a
Speaker 2: great example of people realizing that actually like that. Maybe
Speaker 2: we thought this was scary, but it's it's cool. It's
Speaker 2: helping us and coexistence continuing there, which I love. And yeah,
Speaker 2: if you want to go in the I think like
Speaker 2: summer is the best time to go see them, because
Speaker 2: they they might they hibernate.
Speaker 1: Maybe not the best time to be in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: but the best time to see these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can go in the late summer too, and
Speaker 2: you can still get a good, good bat view And
Speaker 2: it's always fun like everybody's out. People are like selling
Speaker 2: glow sticks, which I think is really funny. On the
Speaker 2: bridge and hanging out with their friends, and you can
Speaker 2: go kayaking on the river and see them like they're awesome.
Speaker 1: I love those bats, and I'm just thinking of people
Speaker 1: with their glow sticks forming a sort of runway for
Speaker 1: these bats, leading them back like a plane landing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've never seen it. Sometimes, like bats, as we've
Speaker 1: mentioned before, they're very social. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: communal living bats, when they exit their their roost for
Speaker 1: the night, they all do so kind of together in
Speaker 1: this big sort of plume of bats, and it has
Speaker 1: sort of similar properties to say, like birds who have
Speaker 1: these like cool murmurations, and it's really really beautiful, well like.
Speaker 2: The beginning of Batman, but instead of being scary and right,
Speaker 2: it's cool and fun. Right.
Speaker 1: And also they contribute more to the economy than Batman does.
Speaker 2: He's not doing nearly enough.
Speaker 1: He's he's buying a lot of fancy gadgets and not
Speaker 1: you know, paying a lot of his taxes, is all
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: He's not giving back, right.
Speaker 1: So we're going to take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we are going to talk about some
Speaker 1: other halloweeny creatures who are spooky and oogy and creepy
Speaker 1: and wonderful, so we will be right back, all right.
Speaker 1: So I know that this is a very bad centric episode,
Speaker 1: but it is Halloween or right before it or right
Speaker 1: after it. I don't understand the calendar. So I did
Speaker 1: want to talk about some other creepy Crawley Halloween animals
Speaker 1: that you discussed in your book, and these are also
Speaker 1: some of my favorites in general. You know how during Halloween,
Speaker 1: it's crazy how into Halloween Americans are. I'm learning this
Speaker 1: now being in Italy, how incredibly huge Halloween is in
Speaker 1: the States. Like here, it's not as much of a thing.
Speaker 1: It's growing in popularity. But yeah, like the incredible displays
Speaker 1: that people put up at in their homes, I do
Speaker 1: miss a lot. And one of the big sort of
Speaker 1: Halloween decorations is the giant spiders. Like you put a
Speaker 1: big giant maybe it's felt, maybe it's made out of
Speaker 1: pipe cleaners, I don't know, but it's a big old
Speaker 1: fake spider in your doorway to scare the little kids.
Speaker 1: And the cool thing is that there are real spiders
Speaker 1: who do the same thing. So, uh, the like, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the decoy spider because I
Speaker 1: love these little gals. They are so incredible, totally.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you picked this one. I love this one too.
Speaker 2: This isn't something I really knew about before I started
Speaker 2: doing the research for the book. So, yeah, like Katie said,
Speaker 2: there's a couple of different kinds of spiders at least
Speaker 2: in a couple of very different parts of the world
Speaker 2: that basically they have these webs up in the forest
Speaker 2: and they'll inadvertently or advertently capture little bits of you know,
Speaker 2: the bugs they want to eat, but then also for
Speaker 2: us debris like bits a leaf or stick, and what
Speaker 2: they'll do is they'll like arrange the debris in their
Speaker 2: web to make a big spider. So they're very small,
Speaker 2: but they make the shape of a big spider, and
Speaker 2: you know, they're like the ones that have been found
Speaker 2: are like there's varying degrees of success, right, Like some
Speaker 2: of these big spiders have six legs and some are
Speaker 2: super lumpy, but some of them, like really they do like.
Speaker 1: They nail it. Yeah, the artistic abilities of these spiders
Speaker 1: does vary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or you know, the intention maybe they're trying to
Speaker 2: go for something that they're like, this is a cubist spider.
Speaker 2: This is a spider, and this is a realistic spider.
Speaker 1: Art is.
Speaker 2: The idea is that, I mean, people, aren't you know why.
Speaker 2: We don't know always why these things happen or why
Speaker 2: they evolve. But the idea is that this big spider
Speaker 2: is scarier to a potential predator than the tiny spider
Speaker 2: that is the real spider. So it's like it's like
Speaker 2: a like having a mech suit or something, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like it's like you have a big robot that you're
Speaker 2: inside of. The spider has a big spider that it's
Speaker 2: inside of, and it's kind of There's a whole group
Speaker 2: of spiders called orb weavers that are able to sort
Speaker 2: of create pictures in their webs like this, and it's
Speaker 2: thought that these are orb weavers who have just come
Speaker 2: up with this really cool and bizarre sculpture to build.
Speaker 1: It seems to offer them a bit of an advantage, right,
Speaker 1: Like there could be some camouflage going on where it
Speaker 1: could potentially intimidate predators who would be too small to
Speaker 1: want to take on this large spiders, this large spiders,
Speaker 1: and it could also like redirect the aggression of say
Speaker 1: birds or any other predator towards the sort of fake
Speaker 1: out spider while the real one slips off and just
Speaker 1: scoots away.
Speaker 2: And it's like they can kind of move the web,
Speaker 2: you know, so they can make the big spider.
Speaker 1: Kind of you. Oh, that's so good. You know those
Speaker 1: costumes that they give little dogs that have the spider legs,
Speaker 1: It's like it's like the little tarantula costumes that they
Speaker 1: put on the little dogs, and then the dogs just like
Speaker 1: bounding around, but they've made it such that the legs
Speaker 1: kind of jiggle as the dog trots around, So it
Speaker 1: looks very unsettling when it's on one of these little dogs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's kind of essentially it. This is like
Speaker 1: a little tiny Chihuahua spider jiggling around in a big
Speaker 1: fake spider, freaking everyone.
Speaker 2: Out right right. I've been thinking about how I want
Speaker 2: to dress my cats up as bats as Halloween. I
Speaker 2: have two black cats, and I'm sure it would be
Speaker 2: so cute how that I probably wouldn't like it. Oh,
Speaker 2: just just put a little like they wear little harnesses, okay,
Speaker 2: you sometimes they hang out in the backyard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could put wings. I see no problem with that.
Speaker 1: You could put little wings on there. I don't think
Speaker 1: they'd noticed, Yeah, I don't. I'm not all my like
Speaker 1: my dog is naked and proud. I the only the
Speaker 1: only Halloween costume I've ever been able to get on
Speaker 1: her was a little bow tie and I just called
Speaker 1: her a political pundit and that was it. I'm babysitting
Speaker 1: three cats and there's no way I would ever get
Speaker 1: anything on them for any amount of time. But one
Speaker 1: of them looks just like Garfield, so I'll say that's
Speaker 1: his costume. He's Garfield, yeah, because he's big. He's big
Speaker 1: and he likes food.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Halloween, I did just remember that last year,
Speaker 2: I got those Reces bats that they make, you know,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, little like peanut buttercup bats, and I printed
Speaker 2: out a bunch of bat facts and I attached them.
Speaker 2: That amazing. That's incredible an educational Halloween.
Speaker 1: You would have been my favorite house. When I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I dressed as a bat. I think more
Speaker 1: than once. Actually, when I was a kid, I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple couple of years I went as a
Speaker 1: I had the wings. I was very particular. I didn't
Speaker 1: want the wings on my back. I wanted them attached
Speaker 1: to my hands because it's like, well, that's what bats
Speaker 1: are like. The wings are essentially extended fingers of the bat,
Speaker 1: which I couldn't necessarily do, but essentially attaching the fabric
Speaker 1: like from sort of my hips to like my pinky
Speaker 1: and then the rest of my arm so that I
Speaker 1: could have wings and like spread my hands out like
Speaker 1: I was a bat. And that was so cool. My
Speaker 1: mom indulged me. I also read the book Stella Luna
Speaker 1: as a kid, so that helped. But I was super
Speaker 1: intended bats as a kid. I loved them. Look at
Speaker 1: you now and look at me now, talking talking talking
Speaker 1: bats on a podcast. So also speaking of our pets,
Speaker 1: there is I think I've actually talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show before, but I can't help bringing it up
Speaker 1: because it's Halloween. But the ghost dogs of the Amazon,
Speaker 1: who are actually not so scary but more just fascinating
Speaker 1: and really cute. I assume I've never seen one, for
Speaker 1: reasons that will become clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just to say, this entry in the book
Speaker 2: was written by a journalist named Claudia Guide, who's really great.
Speaker 2: She spoke to the world's leading ghost dog expert. Were
Speaker 2: not elite Pittman, but basically these dogs live in the
Speaker 2: Amazon and they're just super rare, like nobody ever sees them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: every once in a while, you know, you'll get a
Speaker 2: glimpse of one on a camera trap, or you'll hear
Speaker 2: one making a little hoot, because that's the time they make.
Speaker 2: But like there's really just not that much known about them,
Speaker 2: which kind of brings home one of the lessons that
Speaker 2: I took from this book, which is that like, even
Speaker 2: though we feel like we know everything about the world,
Speaker 2: there's actutes, so so much going on that we don't know,
Speaker 2: especially in places like the Amazon, which we are like destroying.
Speaker 2: We're really destroying all the stuff that we don't even
Speaker 2: know about yet. In any case, this biologist became really
Speaker 2: obsessed with these dogs in around two thousand, she was
Speaker 2: working in Peru. She started to track them with radio collars,
Speaker 2: and she eventually lived with one because somebody had sort
Speaker 2: of like almost like poached a puppy from the reinforest
Speaker 2: and was raising it as like a normal dog.
Speaker 1: It was like, I don't want to be clear, We're clear,
Speaker 1: this is not a These aren't fairal domesticated dogs. These
Speaker 1: are these are canids, a species of canad similar to say,
Speaker 1: I mean not similar, but in the same vein as
Speaker 1: like say, like a dingo is a species of canaan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's not. Yeah, it's not the kind
Speaker 2: of puppy that you want to just be hanging out
Speaker 2: with if you're not prepared for that. So she she
Speaker 2: bought this puppy from this person, and she actually sort
Speaker 2: of lived alongside it almost like again not like a pet,
Speaker 2: but just observing and learning a lot about what these
Speaker 2: dogs did and like leading it on the leash or
Speaker 2: being led by it through the leash for a year. Yeah,
Speaker 2: learned like what it eats. They eat fruit, which is cool,
Speaker 2: they eat nuts. They actually like are important seed dispersers
Speaker 2: in the rainforest poops. And after about a year she
Speaker 2: just took the leash off and he ran away. Makes sense.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I didn't know about that that someone
Speaker 1: actually was able to get information that way. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is I kind of like that, Like essentially
Speaker 1: it's like no, you're not I'm not you're not gonna
Speaker 1: tame me. I'm not gonna be domesticated, and I'm out
Speaker 1: of here, which is very different even from sort of
Speaker 1: dog ancestors. Right, Like, I'm not suggesting anyone tries to
Speaker 1: tame a wolf, but technically speaking, you can, and people
Speaker 1: who tame wolves can actually form a relationship with them,
Speaker 1: and the wolves are actually pretty They can act, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat doug like, right, like being friendly with their with
Speaker 1: the people who've tamed them. Maybe sometimes you lose some
Speaker 1: fingers or your life, but a lot of the times you,
Speaker 1: you know, these people who you know, tame these wolves
Speaker 1: usually on like wolf rescues do form like kind of
Speaker 1: a relationship with wolves. They're very different from dogs, though
Speaker 1: it's not going to be just like a large husky.
Speaker 1: They are much more fiercely independent than dogs. They seek
Speaker 1: human help, much less, much more likely to kill you,
Speaker 1: you know. They just operate by different rules from dogs
Speaker 1: because dogs have been their dogs are not tamed. They
Speaker 1: are domesticated. They've gone through many, many, many, many generations
Speaker 1: of artificial selection by humans and also potentially some self
Speaker 1: selection in terms of like domesticating themselves so that they
Speaker 1: could get in on our sweet, sweet scraps. But these dogs,
Speaker 1: these ghost dogs, they're not necessarily of the of the
Speaker 1: same sort of lineage, right, They're not. They're related to wolves,
Speaker 1: they're related to domesticated dogs, but they are not necessarily
Speaker 1: pack animals, and so if they have a more solitary lifestyle,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that there's just not You're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to tame one because it doesn't really
Speaker 1: have any interest in you, because in its natural environment,
Speaker 1: is not necessarily social in the same way that wolves
Speaker 1: or dogs or even hyenas or dingos are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. One thing that this bile just learned was
Speaker 2: that one reason that people don't see these ghost dogs
Speaker 2: is they live in burrows, like kind of on their own,
Speaker 2: or they'll hide inside.
Speaker 1: Of hollow trees or yellow that's adorable.
Speaker 2: So they are like they are sneaky, They're just sneaking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of sounds like my dog. She likes to
Speaker 1: sometimes hide under a chair and I spend like, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes of panic, like where is she? There's no
Speaker 1: way she could have left the apartment. I'm on the
Speaker 1: top floor. What's going on? And she's just like hanging
Speaker 1: out under a chair, probably deeply amused at me as
Speaker 1: I'm looking around.
Speaker 2: Ghost dog.
Speaker 1: Yes, she did dress herself up for Halloween. She tossed
Speaker 1: a toy weasel in the air and then it landed
Speaker 1: around her neck. Like she's a fancy lady. So that's
Speaker 1: about as close as we're going to get to a
Speaker 1: Halloween costume. My dog the fancy lady wearing a mink
Speaker 1: around her neck, which is actually just a gross old
Speaker 1: toy that she's had since she was a puppy. I
Speaker 1: do want to talk about carnivorous plants, because I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of a that's kind of a Halloweeny thing
Speaker 1: that we don't tell or I don't talk about plants
Speaker 1: that much on the podcast. It's not my strength, but
Speaker 1: I do love carnivorous plants. I love especially pitcher plants,
Speaker 1: because of all of the various symbiotic relationships they have
Speaker 1: with other critters like bats, frogs, crab, spiders. You've basically
Speaker 1: got like your perfect Halloween mix with pitcher plants, all
Speaker 1: the crowd favorites of Halloween, and then your cauldron, which
Speaker 1: is made out of a plant that does even mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. I love carniverse plants too. They're
Speaker 2: like they really teach you that there are no rules,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, like we think that we understand how
Speaker 2: plants work, but then there's all these ones that are
Speaker 2: like flipping the food chain, and yeah, we're just like, Okay,
Speaker 2: go for it. Picture plants are really cool. Like you said,
Speaker 2: they look like a cauldron. They are just like this
Speaker 2: big cup and then at the bottom of the cup
Speaker 2: there is like a murk of digestive juices, which I
Speaker 2: assume that's what's in a cauldron as well. I guess
Speaker 2: that's something like that confirmed. But yeah, they so all
Speaker 2: carnivorse plants. Basically, instead of getting their nutrients from soil
Speaker 2: the way that we understand plants to do it, they
Speaker 2: get their nutrients from like living things like bugs, like
Speaker 2: a venus fly trap is the classic example. It will
Speaker 2: snap up a little fly and then digest the fly,
Speaker 2: and that's how it gets some of the things it
Speaker 2: needs like nitrogen and phosphorus and stuff like that that
Speaker 2: other plants will drop through their roots from the soil.
Speaker 2: So yeah, very cool. Picture plants. They don't really necessarily
Speaker 2: like actively move like a lot of carnervous plants, like
Speaker 2: the fly trap, which will go like out and grab
Speaker 2: the fly.
Speaker 1: Like a trigger that the fly hits and then that
Speaker 1: triggers this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is so cool. But the picture plants
Speaker 2: are they're just hanging out and waiting for something to
Speaker 2: fall in. Basically that's.
Speaker 1: My method of eating weight around and wait for something
Speaker 1: to fall in.
Speaker 2: They have these ways of attracting prey, so like they
Speaker 2: will have a little like sweet nectar around like the
Speaker 2: lip of themselves, and then a bug will come and
Speaker 2: eat it and fall in over and sometimes they'll get,
Speaker 2: you know, something bigger than that. But a lot of
Speaker 2: them have evolved over time to be even more interesting.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite ones I learned about writing this
Speaker 2: book was the lowest picture plant, which is also known
Speaker 2: as the shrew poop plant. So basically it's like nectar
Speaker 2: appendage attract shrew shrews, and the shrews will come and
Speaker 2: like leaning over to lick the nectar off the edge
Speaker 2: of the picture plant like puts them in like the
Speaker 2: squatty potty position, you know, And so they're just like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: like how convenient I can eat and also relieve myself
Speaker 2: at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, food plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it poops into the plant and the plant is like, yes,
Speaker 2: like that's what I wanted, and it's free. I guess
Speaker 2: the nutrients. I know. It's so funny. It's like so crazy,
Speaker 2: how amazing these different strategies are that have evolved over
Speaker 2: time the same thing. There's another picture plant that does
Speaker 2: this with really really tiny pats that are like an
Speaker 2: inch long and it's appendage. Like the bats echo locate
Speaker 2: and they can see like, oh, this is the guy.
Speaker 2: This is the one we like, Like, we want to
Speaker 2: go roost in here. Yeah, And they go and they
Speaker 2: like roost inside the giant picture plan and they poop
Speaker 2: in it, and the plant.
Speaker 1: Is like, yes, right, fertilizer. Because these plants are freaks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I also love the ones that have
Speaker 1: the semitic relationship with the crab spiders because the spiders
Speaker 1: will also make a little home out of these plants.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because these piccher plants will both eat insects,
Speaker 1: but also so it won't necessarily eat the spider while
Speaker 1: it's alive, because the spider is suspended by a thread,
Speaker 1: so it's got kind of a safety tether and but
Speaker 1: the spy but it's not really a it is more
Speaker 1: of a mutualistic relationship because when the spider, the spider
Speaker 1: might catch a fly that it was kind of thinking
Speaker 1: of landing in the plant but kind of decided against it.
Speaker 1: But oops, now there's a spider there. And so it
Speaker 1: will eat the juices out of the spider or eat
Speaker 1: suck the juices out of the fly or whatever insect,
Speaker 1: and then dump the rest of its carcass into the plant,
Speaker 1: and the plant can actually use that. So the plant
Speaker 1: that have these little spiders living in them actually end
Speaker 1: up getting more nutrition than ones that do not have
Speaker 1: the spiders. And of course the spiders also get more
Speaker 1: catches by being in this plant that has this fragrance
Speaker 1: that attracts the flies. So it's a mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 1: And then the sort of the best deal for the
Speaker 1: picture plant is that once the spider finally kicks the bucket,
Speaker 1: where does it go? It falls right back into the
Speaker 1: picture plant, and so you know, it's like, well, you
Speaker 1: were my friend, my little buddy, and now you're my meal,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I don't know that picture plants
Speaker 1: are sentimental, probably because they don't have a brain. But
Speaker 1: still it's a beautiful friendship all the way until the
Speaker 1: soupy end.
Speaker 2: I sort of think it's our job as the storytelling
Speaker 2: species to like add this meaning yeah, onto these relationships
Speaker 2: that we observe. So I think it's totally valid, yeah,
Speaker 2: to sort of be like this is this way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's just my personal opinion.
Speaker 1: It's like if a Little Shop of Horrors ended very differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or it's like how people talk about cats would
Speaker 2: like eat you if your dead body was in your house.
Speaker 2: They might, you know, they might, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: like a bad thing. It might. No, it's a way
Speaker 2: of incorporating you. Yeah, to themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that, Like, I think that
Speaker 1: the more complex and animal gets, especially ones that are
Speaker 1: highly social or at least tolerant like cats and dogs,
Speaker 1: the more I do think they really kind of appreciate
Speaker 1: these sort of relationships, right, Like if you have a hamster,
Speaker 1: it may have a dim appreciation for you. A dogg
Speaker 1: or cat is going to have a greater appreciation for you,
Speaker 1: and I think they do. They are going to miss
Speaker 1: you if you keel over and die, and they will
Speaker 1: be sad about it, and they might possibly eat some
Speaker 1: of you. None of those are mutually exclusive of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. They are a little spooky though, so they're
Speaker 2: still on them.
Speaker 1: There you go, Yeah cats and yeah, shout out to
Speaker 1: black cats. I don't think there's any I know that
Speaker 1: people like talk about how Halloween is a really dangerous
Speaker 1: night for black cats. I don't think that's true necessarily,
Speaker 1: like in terms of like people are like, ah, people
Speaker 1: are trying to do rituals with black cats. I don't
Speaker 1: think any of there's any actual evidence of that other
Speaker 1: than like scattered anecdotes. But you know, every night is
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous for cats if they're outdoors, I mean, particularly
Speaker 1: black cats. They're harder to see, so they can be
Speaker 1: victims of getting hit by cars. So you know, keep
Speaker 1: keep your cats in this Halloween and if possible, the
Speaker 1: rest of the year too. But they are they are wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful animals. Nothing nothing spooky or different about black cats
Speaker 1: compared to other species or other breeds of cats. They are,
Speaker 1: uh sometimes looked over in shelters and stuff, but they
Speaker 1: really are just the same sweet little fluffballs or sometimes
Speaker 1: not so sweet fluff balls as other cats.
Speaker 2: I love my black cats. I like Halloween because there's
Speaker 2: just a lot of black cat appreciation out there. Yes,
Speaker 2: Like we can go around and you see a lot
Speaker 2: of black cat representation in yards and in windows and
Speaker 2: in the aisles of the drug stores and stuff. And
Speaker 2: I do like that. Yeah for Halloween.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now there I mean, you know, it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: I do feel that there has been a cultural shift
Speaker 1: in terms of black cats, bats, things like that, where
Speaker 1: people kind of appreciate them more rather than genuinely being
Speaker 1: afraid of them. Black cats are still somewhat overlooked in shelters,
Speaker 1: like they're less taken up than other types of cats,
Speaker 1: which is a shame. But yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that like, if you watch Kiki's Delivery Service and don't
Speaker 1: come away wanting a black cat, there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, before we go, let's play a little
Speaker 1: game called Guess Who's squawking? The Mystery Animal Sound Game.
Speaker 1: Every week I play a mystery animal sound and you
Speaker 1: the listener. K you're the guest, try to guess who
Speaker 1: is making this sound. It can be any animal in
Speaker 1: the world, So you know, no pressure, not hard at all.
Speaker 1: Here is the hint for this one. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of a long hint, but here we go. So I've
Speaker 1: actually used this sound before on the show, but I
Speaker 1: can't help pulling it out again because I think it
Speaker 1: could be a sample in a europop song. Our. One
Speaker 1: of our last episodes is about Eurovision, and so one
Speaker 1: of our last episodes was about Eurovision. So anyways, maybe
Speaker 1: I should even say Colombian music because this little guy
Speaker 1: is from the andyes, all right, Cared, do you have
Speaker 1: any guesses of who this could be?
Speaker 2: This a velbird?
Speaker 1: Oh man, you are so close, you are so so close.
Speaker 1: It is it's in the same sort of region. It's
Speaker 1: a it is a bird. This is the club winged Mannikin.
Speaker 1: So this you are incredibly close it Actually they sound
Speaker 1: very similar, but they have a very different way of
Speaker 1: producing sound. So the club wing Mannequin is a cute
Speaker 1: little bird with a red cap, a brown vest, and
Speaker 1: black and white wings that are surprisingly short and stubby.
Speaker 1: They are bad flyers, not very graceful, but the wings
Speaker 1: have this superpower, which is sunnation. They vibrate their wings
Speaker 1: incredibly fast, and they have a mechanism similar to how
Speaker 1: insects produce sound through stridulation, like crickets that rub their wings,
Speaker 1: but the feathers have been specifically modified to kind of
Speaker 1: have this like ridge structure, sure, like a spoon and
Speaker 1: washboard kind of structure that allows them to stridulate, and
Speaker 1: so it shakes its wings like a hundred times a second,
Speaker 1: producing this loud incredible sound, which a bird like the bellbird,
Speaker 1: which produces a very similar sound, produces instead with its syrinx,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the bird version of a larynx,
Speaker 1: and it just has this large resonance chamber that can
Speaker 1: produce this loud sound. But this little bird uses its
Speaker 1: wings and it is one of my favorites. And it's
Speaker 1: also just really funny how little and stubby, and if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen them fly, they are not elegant.
Speaker 2: That's so cool. Thanks for teaching me about that. I
Speaker 2: learned so much today overall.
Speaker 1: Well, I learned so much from reading your book, so
Speaker 1: it seems we have made a fair exchange of knowledge here.
Speaker 1: And you also help out this podcast. When I read
Speaker 1: your articles, I'm like, I have to talk about that.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I'm so glad that I could return the
Speaker 1: favor at least once. Onto this week's mystery animal sound.
Speaker 1: The hint is this happy hollow ween from this loud
Speaker 1: little aquatic gentleman. All right, Karen, you got any guesses.
Speaker 2: An aquatic gentleman? An aquatic like a little tadpole with
Speaker 2: a top hat, but probably a fish of some kind.
Speaker 2: Is it like a like a sea robin or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I don't as sea robin.
Speaker 2: You said, yeah, that's a kind of fish that I
Speaker 2: know can make sound.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't even know about that fish,
Speaker 1: so you are incorrect yet. Now I want to learn
Speaker 1: about the sea robin fish, so you're on the hook
Speaker 1: for teaching me that. So another hint. It's not the
Speaker 1: sea robin fish. But tell me about the sea robin fish.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, it's just like, it looks really funny.
Speaker 2: It lives in shallow water, and it's called the sea
Speaker 2: robin because it has fins that look sort of like wings.
Speaker 2: And then it also comes like I love this guy
Speaker 2: gurgle above the water. It can make suense.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well now I know what I'm going
Speaker 1: to use for a future one of these. I'll have
Speaker 1: to wait a little while so people don't see it coming.
Speaker 1: But this guy looks incredible. I love his little wings.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. In a way, you still win because you
Speaker 1: taught me about an animal that I have not heard
Speaker 1: of before. But but no, you did not get it.
Speaker 1: But we will reveal the answer to this one next
Speaker 1: time on Creature Feature. Kara, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. I'm so pleased to have you on.
Speaker 1: I had a great time reading your book, and I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. It's Atlas Obscuro, not a ciro, sorry,
Speaker 1: at List Obscure Wildlife and co authored by Kara Gaimo.
Speaker 1: Where can people find your book and where can people
Speaker 1: find more of your incredible writing?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, so my book is available basically everywhere. You
Speaker 2: can buy it online, you can probably buy it at
Speaker 2: your local bookstore. I agree with Katie, if you like
Speaker 2: this podcast, you'll probably like the book. I I feel
Speaker 2: like more confident saying that than I have on any
Speaker 2: other podcast I've done.
Speaker 1: It's one hundred percent true. Like, if you like this,
Speaker 1: this is like kind of like this podcast in book form,
Speaker 1: but with very much care of flavored. So wonderful.
Speaker 2: And as for me, I don't know, I'm I'm all
Speaker 2: over the place. I'm actually I'm on a book tour
Speaker 2: right now. If if you're I don't know when this
Speaker 2: episode is going to.
Speaker 1: Come out, but halloweenish, okay.
Speaker 2: If you're in Portland, Oregon, you can see me at
Speaker 2: Portland Book Festival on November two. That's my birthday. Oh
Speaker 2: that's cool.
Speaker 1: Celebrate celebrate my birthday by going to Portland.
Speaker 2: And I'll yeah, I am freelance, so you can I
Speaker 2: crop up all over the place. You can look for
Speaker 2: my byline anywhere. You enjoy fine journalism about creatures, And yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's all I can really plug right now.
Speaker 1: I have gotten to the point where I will be
Speaker 1: reading something and I forget to look at the author
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wait, this is para, isn't it. And
Speaker 1: I checked and I'm so right.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's fun, that's cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, well, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Have a real, real, good, spooky and fun Halloween. Enjoy
Speaker 1: all the candy. I'm not a dentist, so I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: eat all the candy you want. Don't even refresh your teeth.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Yeah, happy Halloween. If you're enjoying this show,
Speaker 1: you rate and review that tangibly helps me and I
Speaker 1: read all of them and appreciate it all. And thanks
Speaker 1: to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Alumina.
Speaker 1: I almost forgot to tell you that if you think
Speaker 1: you know who the mister animal sound is, if you
Speaker 1: have any questions ooh oh, if you have animal costumes,
Speaker 1: that you put your at least partially willing pets in,
Speaker 1: send them to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: And this has been a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: app Apple Podcasts or Hi Gus, what where have you
Speaker 1: listened to your favorite show. I'm not your mother, and
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not watching you from behind you right now,
Speaker 1: so it's none of my business. DNX Wednesday,