Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Christian Segre. Hey, Robert,
Speaker 1: I got a superhero question for you, Batman. Why doesn't
Speaker 1: he have any disease related abilities or or like an
Speaker 1: improved immune system? So, so, you know, Batman has been
Speaker 1: around for like over seventy years, we largely know bats
Speaker 1: as being disease carriers, right, and yet he doesn't seem to,
Speaker 1: I mean outside of like I guess like he has
Speaker 1: a little pellets on his pouch that he occasionally uses
Speaker 1: to throw gas at people, but I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like he's throwing a bowl at them. Yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: when you start taking apart Batman, right, because in what
Speaker 1: ways is Batman actually like a bat at all? Or
Speaker 1: or perhaps more telling, in what ways, was was he
Speaker 1: even initially like a bat? Because I know a number
Speaker 1: of talented writers and artists have had a had a
Speaker 1: chance over the years to build on the Batman mythos
Speaker 1: and occasionally incorporate bits of bat science. But was maybe
Speaker 1: you can answer this, was he essentially just a dude
Speaker 1: in a mask? Because this this recently, I watched a
Speaker 1: large portion of the the really bad nine nine Batman
Speaker 1: and Robin series is like a serial black and white
Speaker 1: forty nine. So this is pre uh the TV show.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think I've seen this riff tracks
Speaker 1: has been installments of it, and it's it's really bad.
Speaker 1: It's from several different vantage points. It has, uh, there's
Speaker 1: some anti Japanese sentiment that's in there. It has this
Speaker 1: just terrible villain that's just called the Wizard, that's like
Speaker 1: a just an old dude in a black robe, and
Speaker 1: and it's just it. It's the the campus versions of
Speaker 1: Batman and Robin as well, you know what you would like.
Speaker 1: And we have never talked about this off air before.
Speaker 1: It is just popping in my head. Now, have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of bat manga? It's so um Japan's version
Speaker 1: of Batman done as manga. It's there's some really old
Speaker 1: stuff and there's a whole book that Chip Kid put
Speaker 1: together that's a collection of the bat manga comics, so
Speaker 1: you get an idea of what Japan's iteration of Batman
Speaker 1: and Robin were like. But then also just like photographs
Speaker 1: of all of the collectibles, the Japanese collectibles related to Batman. Anyways,
Speaker 1: It's fascinating because when you mentioned this Batman villain, the Wizard,
Speaker 1: Like when you think of your like top rogues for Batman,
Speaker 1: the Wizard isn't really high up there. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: batmana stuff is very similar. He's got all these like
Speaker 1: totally bizarre characters that he interacts with. From a Western perspective,
Speaker 1: the thing that's interesting to me about the Wizard is
Speaker 1: that it seems like somebody would have brought the Wizard
Speaker 1: back just for the sake of doing it. Like it
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of thing like a Grant Morrison
Speaker 1: would say, Hey, nobody's brought this character back. What's some
Speaker 1: sort of crazy counterculture span I can put on it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you're right. Actually, so it's funny you mentioned
Speaker 1: that Grant Morrison did bring back one of the weird
Speaker 1: villains from The Batman. So yeah, I think his name
Speaker 1: was like Mr. Deathman or something like that. It's like
Speaker 1: a guy in a skeleton costume. Um. Anyways, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: doesn't really have bat abilities right, Like, so, uh, he
Speaker 1: doesn't really fly. He glides for the most part, does
Speaker 1: not have powered flight, which is the big deal with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk a lot about that today. I
Speaker 1: guess he has the bat plane that could kind of
Speaker 1: count sometimes, but yeah, exactly. Um, he does use like echolocation.
Speaker 1: I think that's become like more of a thing since
Speaker 1: those Christopher Nolan movies. Yeah, I feel like that's definitely
Speaker 1: a case where Invented Riders came in and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we should make him behave a little like a bat
Speaker 1: solce thrown. Yeah, those Arkham video games like, you can
Speaker 1: use the echolocation stuff pretty frequently. They call it detective mode,
Speaker 1: and you can basically like everything around you, kind of
Speaker 1: like a radar fashion. I wonder has anyone ever decided
Speaker 1: to have Bruce Wayne and Batman is essentially a fruit
Speaker 1: bat where when he's not fighting crimes, just setting around
Speaker 1: ian mangoes all day. Right, Yeah, I don't you know.
Speaker 1: If anybody would do it would be Morrison and likewise
Speaker 1: you have down here. If he was a fruit bat,
Speaker 1: can he lack tape? That would be great too. That
Speaker 1: would put a new maternal spin on it because of
Speaker 1: just to throw out the quick snapshot of the science, uh,
Speaker 1: certain varieties of male fruit bats lactate in order to
Speaker 1: help we're the young, like most males. Uh well, let
Speaker 1: me say that male humans can lactate is well under
Speaker 1: the reser scenarios. But the male fruit bat in this
Speaker 1: case is the only example of a mammal that regularly
Speaker 1: lactates to help real young. Yeah. The only thing I
Speaker 1: can think of that's even moderately close to that is
Speaker 1: again Morrison introduced a bat cow. You know, like Batman
Speaker 1: and Superman have like pets. He has like a dog
Speaker 1: and a cat, and like Superman has a horse and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Is this really a thing? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Superman has a horse. Yeah, comment the super horse. I
Speaker 1: think Supergirl rides, ok, yeah, and it flies. But but
Speaker 1: Batman had a cow. Uh in the Grant Morris in
Speaker 1: line because I think, like Robin like, they infiltrated some
Speaker 1: criminal headquarters where they're like abusing cows, and Robin like
Speaker 1: saved one of the cows and brought it back to
Speaker 1: Wayne Manner and it had like the markings on its face,
Speaker 1: like the way that its coloration on his face was
Speaker 1: looked like a bad symbol. Alright, like that, but all right,
Speaker 1: let's bring it back to sort of reality for a
Speaker 1: second year. He doesn't really have any disease related abilities.
Speaker 1: And I'd say, like, if you walk up to most
Speaker 1: people in the street and you say, like, hey, bats
Speaker 1: what are the first three things you know about them? Right,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, they fly, they have echolocation, and they
Speaker 1: their carriers of disease. Right. Um, So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe when you and I get our hands on the
Speaker 1: Batman franchise in ten or twenty years, will finally be
Speaker 1: able to write that like Batman as the Black Plague. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it comes down to the idea that certainly
Speaker 1: you have comic book characters that are embodiments of disease.
Speaker 1: But there, you know, I think almost all villains. I
Speaker 1: can't think of a hero off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's somebody. There's this really silly one. Oh God,
Speaker 1: I can't remember what her name is, Infectious Lass. I
Speaker 1: think she's one of the legions of the Legion of Superheroes.
Speaker 1: That's the only one I can think of. But why
Speaker 1: are we talking about this? Why are we talking about bats? Well,
Speaker 1: if you're a long time listener stuftable in your mind,
Speaker 1: you know probably for the last year I've been casually
Speaker 1: saying we should do an episode on bats, we should
Speaker 1: do an episode on bats, And then we did the
Speaker 1: Patient zero episode, and we were talking about bats there
Speaker 1: because of how they spread disease, zoonotic disease. We specifically
Speaker 1: talked about the case of Dr lu Jian Lun, who
Speaker 1: was a sixty four year old doctor in China's Guangda
Speaker 1: Province UH, and he apparently transferred UH STARS I believe
Speaker 1: it was to sixteen other guests staying on the same
Speaker 1: floor of like a hotel UH and this seemed to
Speaker 1: be a case of super spreading. We talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot in the Patient zero episode. We get into
Speaker 1: the idea of how STARS was sort of a bat
Speaker 1: disease right that it was a zootic infectious disease. It
Speaker 1: jumped from one species to another UH. This step involved
Speaker 1: the virus being able to transmit then from human to
Speaker 1: human without an animal reservoir like a bat. So it
Speaker 1: was believed that STARS originated in bats and then spread
Speaker 1: to other animals like civic cats, and then the civic
Speaker 1: cats infected humans. Another thing that we talked about related
Speaker 1: to bats was that they've got all kinds of diseases
Speaker 1: that they're related to the Bola hepatitis c Stars and
Speaker 1: also perhaps mers UH. In the case of Stars, it
Speaker 1: was thought that it spread to humans in by bats
Speaker 1: infecting horses in Brisbane, Austra Alia. Then two people caught
Speaker 1: that virus from the horses, possibly from scratches, are being
Speaker 1: exposed to infected blood. Both died horrible deaths UH and
Speaker 1: other diseases. So they think maybe pigs have become infected
Speaker 1: by eating saliva colored fruit that bats have just dropped,
Speaker 1: and then the pigs infect humans. So it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like a lot of these zoonotic infection cases that bats
Speaker 1: are biting humans and humans are getting the disease. It's
Speaker 1: like various ways bats are infecting other animals and then
Speaker 1: those other animals are infecting humans. They're just a major
Speaker 1: conduit in the chain. Yeah. So um. We received a
Speaker 1: little bit of listening mail about this, asking for clarification,
Speaker 1: people who were concerned primarily about like the conservation of bats,
Speaker 1: and the idea that maybe we didn't give the full
Speaker 1: story and that that would subsequently lead to more fearmongering
Speaker 1: of bats, right, and far be it from us. That
Speaker 1: is the last thing I want to do. In fact,
Speaker 1: I have to just as a subjective thing before we
Speaker 1: really get into bat I've spent some time in Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas recently, and if anybody who's gone there and that
Speaker 1: they know about the Batbridge, yeah, and man alive. I
Speaker 1: love the Bat Bridge. It's so much fun. If you've
Speaker 1: never been, I forget I thinks the Congress Street bridge
Speaker 1: in Austin. But you go there certain times a year,
Speaker 1: certain times a night, millions of bats live under this
Speaker 1: bridge and they all fly out from under the neath
Speaker 1: this bridge all at the same time. You get to
Speaker 1: see them for about like thirty minutes, just the swarm
Speaker 1: of them up in the air, flying around and then
Speaker 1: going off to various parts of Austin to you know,
Speaker 1: collect their food for the night, basically before they go
Speaker 1: back to sleep under the bridge during the day. Again. Uh,
Speaker 1: I like bats, Like if a bat was caught in
Speaker 1: my home, like, my reaction wouldn't be killing, It would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, let's capture that guy and then let
Speaker 1: him back outside. Yeah. I U. I have to say that.
Speaker 1: On vacations, especially vacations to the Caribbean, which I've got
Speaker 1: to go in on two of those in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, I've always both trips. I just really
Speaker 1: enjoyed watching the bats when the sun began to go down. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they're just fascinating creatures. And uh, and when
Speaker 1: I have captured them in the house before, not not
Speaker 1: my house, but like a vacation house they staying. And
Speaker 1: one time over a weekend they we found it. It
Speaker 1: had somehow gotten trapped in the house and it was
Speaker 1: trying to like get water out of the sink, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was a tea bag at first. I'm
Speaker 1: glad retrospect that I did not like gravitated or put
Speaker 1: in my tea and have some horrible bat tea concoction.
Speaker 1: But my son and I like made up, you know,
Speaker 1: an activity out of freeing the bat from the house
Speaker 1: and helping it get away. So yeah, bats are fascinating creatures.
Speaker 1: Were certainly not trying to spread any fear about it.
Speaker 1: In fact, this episode is about spreading some truth on
Speaker 1: the matter. Yeah. In fact, we have actually gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where between yes, bats carrying a lot of disease,
Speaker 1: but they have these fascinating immune systems that we're starting
Speaker 1: to look at the science of their anatomy how it
Speaker 1: deals with these viruses and then how we might apply
Speaker 1: that to human beings. Bats maybe the key to us
Speaker 1: living longer lives and fighting off diseases that currently are
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous to human beings. One day we may all
Speaker 1: be batman and bad girls. Yeah exactly. And you know,
Speaker 1: unlike Bruce Wayne, we will maybe carry viruses, but our
Speaker 1: immune systems will be so fast that will just be
Speaker 1: constantly compromising them. All right, Well, should we get down
Speaker 1: to brass tacks the Yeah, let's just let's do a
Speaker 1: little overview about bats. I think we should say. First
Speaker 1: of all, like stuff to blow your mind. Before I
Speaker 1: was on it did a bunch of bad episodes. You
Speaker 1: and Julie have talked about them extensively. Um, so let's
Speaker 1: just do a refresher. Okay. So, all told, they're about
Speaker 1: five different species of bats in the world, and they
Speaker 1: make up about a quarter of all mammal species. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are forty five different species of bats that live
Speaker 1: in the United States and Canada. Most bats species live
Speaker 1: in the tropical regions of the world. Now, evidence for
Speaker 1: bat like flying mammals appears as far back as that
Speaker 1: you're seeing e box, some fifty million years ago. However,
Speaker 1: the fossil record tracing bat evolution is incomplete, so based
Speaker 1: on similarities of bones and teeth, most authorities agree that
Speaker 1: bats ancestors were probably insect eating animals, possibly living in
Speaker 1: the trees, and they likely the same group that gave
Speaker 1: rise to shrews and moles. So bats are are not
Speaker 1: rodents and they're not even uh closely related to that
Speaker 1: group of mammals. Yeah, that's really important for what we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss today too, because they're often compared to
Speaker 1: rodents in terms of how the two different species act
Speaker 1: as disease carriers. You think it's like a flying mouse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so most bats in UH in North America eat insects.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, one at eats about two
Speaker 1: thousand to six thousand insects each night. Wow. And just
Speaker 1: a few other crazy cool facts about them. When it
Speaker 1: comes to flying, it's it's easy to think, oh, it's
Speaker 1: just it's a it's about with it's a mouse with wings.
Speaker 1: It's like a cross between a mouse and a bird. Well,
Speaker 1: it's more complicated and more amazing than that. So throughout
Speaker 1: human history, we've only had a few evolutionarily distinct modes
Speaker 1: of flight, and there are only three distinct modes of
Speaker 1: vertebrate flight flight. There there's the terasarian flight that was
Speaker 1: you know employed by the by by pterodactyls, pterodactyls, um taranodons, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And then you have avian flight, and then you have
Speaker 1: chiropter in flight, which is bats. So these are distinct
Speaker 1: modes of flight that were that were that evolved separately.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that there there's insect flight
Speaker 1: as well. So four models all told. Now you once
Speaker 1: had mega bats as opposed to micro bats, and these
Speaker 1: are large bats that were the are that are found
Speaker 1: in old world tropical rainforests such as Australia, Asia and Africa,
Speaker 1: so dire bats. Yeah. And then the biggest bats in
Speaker 1: the world, and the biggest bat in the world right
Speaker 1: now is the Malayan flying fox found in Asia. It
Speaker 1: weighs about two pounds and has a wingspin of about
Speaker 1: six ft and it eats only fruit. See yeah, and
Speaker 1: people are probably you know, scared of it, I would assume,
Speaker 1: even though it's just you know, eating nectar, eating nectar
Speaker 1: and pooping. I mean, yeah. Um, the flying fox comes
Speaker 1: up a lot in this research. It's one of the
Speaker 1: one of the species that's investigated. Now, the smallest bat
Speaker 1: in the world is kitties hog nose bat, also called
Speaker 1: the bumblebee bat, and it's found in Thailand. Weighs about
Speaker 1: two grams that's about how much of dime ways, and
Speaker 1: it has a six inch wings. But it's like a
Speaker 1: hummingbird bat, any tiny little thing. All right, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back, we will
Speaker 1: jump into the disea. Okay, so we're back. So yeah.
Speaker 1: So there is this just assumption by most people that
Speaker 1: bats carry disease. Right, That's why most people freak out
Speaker 1: when they find a bat in their house. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna spread disease. It's probably got rabies or something. Right,
Speaker 1: we've got a god. I remember this when I was
Speaker 1: like five years old. We were at my uncle's house
Speaker 1: and there was a bat in the attic and he
Speaker 1: had a tennis racket and was like chasing this bat
Speaker 1: around the house with a tennis racket, trying to trying
Speaker 1: to kill it. And I, even at five, I was like,
Speaker 1: why just open the window, man, let this back. Anyway,
Speaker 1: bats are a refuge for some of the world's most
Speaker 1: lethal diseases to humans. That is true. And that includes rabies, Ebola,
Speaker 1: Marburg and stars. Now, because there are many high profile
Speaker 1: epidemics that are traced to bats, we call these bat
Speaker 1: born viruses, and there's a whole line of investigation related
Speaker 1: to bat born viruses. They're similar the way that they
Speaker 1: carry diseases, similar to rats or mice, and that they
Speaker 1: are known as disease reservoirs. But again, they are not rodents,
Speaker 1: so these are very different species. Now, while they seem
Speaker 1: adept at harboring and spreading disease, others argue that this
Speaker 1: notoriety for bats isn't justified. Most of the time, reservoirs
Speaker 1: like bats rarely show symptoms of the disease that they're
Speaker 1: actually infected with. This is why they came up as
Speaker 1: a topic when we were talking about patient zero. Other times,
Speaker 1: the virus infects a new, more vulnerable species like us
Speaker 1: human beings. This is why most research says that bats
Speaker 1: were responsible for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Now,
Speaker 1: what's weird is that bats don't seem to die as
Speaker 1: quickly from these viruses. In Ghana, for instance, sixty eight
Speaker 1: percent of fruit bats over ten years old had antibodies
Speaker 1: in their system for the rabies LESA virus, but they
Speaker 1: were all in good health. The same goes for those
Speaker 1: that were carrying a bowla. There was only one presumed
Speaker 1: bat to human transfer of the disease. So there's this
Speaker 1: this fear that the bats are going to spread the
Speaker 1: disease to us, right, and yet there's very little evidence
Speaker 1: that there's bad to human transfer. Uh, but more along
Speaker 1: the lines like we were talking about earlier, that it's
Speaker 1: more like bats. In fact, other animals were encroaching upon
Speaker 1: bat habitats. Therefore we get infected as it transfers from
Speaker 1: animal to animals. Zoonotic infection now obligatory Simpsons reference. UM.
Speaker 1: I remember there being an episode where it's it's explained
Speaker 1: that Mr Burns Uh is still alive because he has
Speaker 1: all of these illnesses that are I think these a
Speaker 1: graphic that shows like all these illnesses trying to squeeze
Speaker 1: through a door at the same time, and none of
Speaker 1: them can get through, and that's why I can't die
Speaker 1: from any of them. That's fascinating. So I can't help
Speaker 1: but think of that, yeah, kind of Uh. In Australia,
Speaker 1: thirty flying foxes. I told you they'd come up add
Speaker 1: antibodies to the Hendra virus, and this indicated that they
Speaker 1: had been infected with it at some point, but only
Speaker 1: three percent at any given time we're actually carrying it,
Speaker 1: so that's a small amount compared to the amount that
Speaker 1: had been infected. The infected bats themselves had low levels
Speaker 1: of this pathogen, indicating that they were somehow keeping it
Speaker 1: at bay. Subsequently, it's really rare for the Hendra disease
Speaker 1: to pass even from bats to horses. However, in eleven
Speaker 1: it leapt over in twenty four cases, and the theory
Speaker 1: for that is because the bats were stressed out uh
Speaker 1: and that the this caused a surge in the level
Speaker 1: of viruses that the bats were carrying and subsequently made
Speaker 1: it easier for them to pass it on to horses.
Speaker 1: This is going to be important later when we talk
Speaker 1: about uh massive culing of bats when people go, oh,
Speaker 1: their disease carriers. We've got to wipe them out, go
Speaker 1: destroy their colonies, right or else they're going to give
Speaker 1: us these diseases. That could only make things worse because
Speaker 1: then you're stressing out the bat population, which makes the
Speaker 1: diseases become even more powerful. Now, I want to throw
Speaker 1: in a note on vampire bats here as well. So Um,
Speaker 1: the author of Bill Shoot has a wonderful book titled
Speaker 1: Dark Banquet that deals with vampiric organisms in general, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it deals with bats. It's also a
Speaker 1: vampire the gathering RPG men. It could be if you
Speaker 1: want to do a very science oriented campaign. He also
Speaker 1: has a book on cannibals out that I have not
Speaker 1: read anyway. In the book, he points out that vampire
Speaker 1: bats introduced the additional threat of a disease promoting wound.
Speaker 1: The host survives the feeding, but the wound invites additional
Speaker 1: organisms and infections. The bigger concern though, is going to
Speaker 1: be raybies. So it's not the most deadly or the
Speaker 1: most common batborn illness, but if the infection takes hold,
Speaker 1: it's essentially fatal in humans and and and rather infamous
Speaker 1: as well. Um, you know of all the pathogens affecting
Speaker 1: humans and in bat populations overall, um rabies sero prevalence,
Speaker 1: that's a number of persons in a population who test
Speaker 1: positive for specific disease can reach fift And you have
Speaker 1: some notes here about Trinidad. We were talking a little
Speaker 1: bit about this earlier because of some Trinidadian folklore, there's
Speaker 1: bats all over the place down there. Yeah and uh.
Speaker 1: And this is an account that to Shoot mentions in
Speaker 1: his book that I think is interesting. It definitely involves
Speaker 1: both bats and disease, but also superstitions attempts to call
Speaker 1: bat populations. So in Trinidad, bat transmitted rabies killed eighty
Speaker 1: nine people and thousands of cattle between n and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four. In thirty four, that's when the Trinidadian Medical
Speaker 1: Department rolled out its anti rabies unit, and their job
Speaker 1: was to respond to vampire bat attacks net and destroy
Speaker 1: the vamps. So they they painted uh that they did
Speaker 1: this by not only killing the bats on the side,
Speaker 1: but they also painted poisonous paint on vampire bat decimating colonies.
Speaker 1: It was a rough situation. Well, and I immediately think
Speaker 1: to the current science and wonder, I wonder how much
Speaker 1: they stressed out the bat population, further spreading disease. The
Speaker 1: human think they certainly did, And Shoot points out that
Speaker 1: superstition played apart in this as well. So local Trinidating
Speaker 1: and the folklore told of creatures called suk unts, and
Speaker 1: these are crones or hags that can shed their skin
Speaker 1: at night and become a fiery, blood sucking ball and
Speaker 1: you sprinkle rice on your doorstep to keep them away. Now,
Speaker 1: there were also conservationists at the time, and they could
Speaker 1: they combated the folklore and the general you know, fear
Speaker 1: of disease associated with bats by spreading the message that look,
Speaker 1: there are only two out of fifty eight bat species
Speaker 1: on the island that are vampires, and if those two
Speaker 1: only the common vampire bat or does Modus rotundus is
Speaker 1: a significant rabies threat. Okay, So that yeah, so that
Speaker 1: definitely sounds a situation where the fear of bats sort
Speaker 1: of got the better of the human population and maybe
Speaker 1: made the problem worse. So we've we've really outlined here
Speaker 1: that Okay, these bats carry all these diseases, they don't
Speaker 1: seem to be affected by it too much. What's the deal?
Speaker 1: And you know, subsequently, why then does it transfer? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like bats have superimmune systems. Again, something you
Speaker 1: would think that Batman would have his power, right, like,
Speaker 1: like that would be a cool power. He just never
Speaker 1: gets I guess Batman just never gets sick anyway, because
Speaker 1: but it's not like any villains are trying. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of why the bats turns out have such
Speaker 1: great immune systems. There's two schools of thought here, okay,
Speaker 1: on whether bats actually carry a disproportionately high number of viruses.
Speaker 1: The first school of thought goes like this, bat related
Speaker 1: epidemics arise because there are so many species of bats,
Speaker 1: and there's so many individual bats, that the emergence of
Speaker 1: all these various diseases isn't surprising. Like Robert said at
Speaker 1: the top, there's more than bats species. Bats comprise more
Speaker 1: than twenty of the mammals on Earth. A single colony
Speaker 1: can sometimes have millions of bats living in it, and
Speaker 1: there may be a massive amount of bat diversity right.
Speaker 1: And study on the Indian flying fox that giant bat
Speaker 1: fifty five viruses were detected in its system. Fifty were
Speaker 1: previously unknown, so they're carrying a lot. That's just one species.
Speaker 1: We may be hearing about bat born epidemics more often
Speaker 1: simply because of how humans are interacting with bats. Right,
Speaker 1: We're encroaching it on their habitats. Subsequently, they suffer from
Speaker 1: the stigma of being disease written and likewise, bats are
Speaker 1: surveyed more often and are easier to catch than other
Speaker 1: mammals too, so subsequently we're again interacting with them more,
Speaker 1: maybe for studies. So some conservationists argue that the viruses
Speaker 1: they carry aren't actually emerging infectious diseases, but they're simply
Speaker 1: just new to us as human beings. And let's remember
Speaker 1: to bats live in those packed colonies, right, so it's
Speaker 1: super easy for them to pass viruses onto one another.
Speaker 1: They also can fly thousands of kilometers, which subsequently makes
Speaker 1: it easier for them to deliver viruses to further distances. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the first theory. Here's the second, like wolverine healing
Speaker 1: factor immune systems theory. Okay, bats have a special physiology
Speaker 1: and lifestyle that makes them exceptionally good at hosting viruses.
Speaker 1: Bats live between three and ten times longer than other
Speaker 1: mammals their size, and we used to think that this
Speaker 1: was because of hibernation, but there's there's been a lot
Speaker 1: more research into this lately. If you inject a bat
Speaker 1: with bacterial toxins that would normally trigger an immune response
Speaker 1: in mammals, a bat will have no fever and no
Speaker 1: spike in white blood cells. Now, research published in shows
Speaker 1: that while bat genomes contain many of the same ingredients
Speaker 1: as other mammals. Bats use these genomes differently. Bat genes
Speaker 1: coding for proteins detect and repaired damaged DNA, and they
Speaker 1: are much more prevalent than we had previously thought. So
Speaker 1: this new line of thinking is that bat genes are
Speaker 1: doing something that helps them survive and reproduce, and that
Speaker 1: they subsequently pass these awesome genes along to subsequent generations.
Speaker 1: So those same DNA repair genes that I was talking
Speaker 1: about are frequently the targets for invading viruses. In fact,
Speaker 1: key genes and DNA damage repair are also involved in
Speaker 1: tumor development and immunity, and this might be why bats
Speaker 1: are evolving in such a way. Now here's a crazy anecdote.
Speaker 1: Bats almost never developed tumors. Perhaps this is because these
Speaker 1: repair genes are just constantly outpacing malignant growths. They almost
Speaker 1: never get cancer. When you give them tumor causing drugs,
Speaker 1: they're less likely to develop cancer than other mammals, So
Speaker 1: that's pretty wild. In humans and mice, defenses like these
Speaker 1: repair genes, those are activated in response to a threat, right,
Speaker 1: So uh, sort of like we're talking about in our
Speaker 1: other episode this week. You know, it's a stimulised system.
Speaker 1: If you have a trigger, it activates it. In this case,
Speaker 1: in bats, it seems to be perpetually turned on. Their
Speaker 1: immune system is just always on, and that might be
Speaker 1: why the viruses they carry are kept below a point
Speaker 1: where they can actually harm their host. Also, bats seem
Speaker 1: to have lost an entire branch of their immune system
Speaker 1: that's made up of inflammas homes. These are the receptors
Speaker 1: and sensors that induce inflammation, so they've all to turn
Speaker 1: down their inflammatory response to various threats, including viruses. So
Speaker 1: basically bats are just like, ain't no big thing I've
Speaker 1: got I've got fifty viruses in me right now, right now.
Speaker 1: Why you're probably going, well, why bats and not me? Right?
Speaker 1: The thought here is is because of the high metabolic
Speaker 1: rate bats have to keep up to maintain their energy
Speaker 1: they produce while they're flying. Otherwise, the stress of flying
Speaker 1: itself would damage their cells and their DNA if it
Speaker 1: wasn't so quickly detected and repaired. So the ability to
Speaker 1: carry all these lethal viruses may come actually as a
Speaker 1: co evolutionary accident. Bats are the only mammals that are
Speaker 1: capable of powered flight, which is super demanding in terms
Speaker 1: of energy, and it subsequently is very tough on their metabolism.
Speaker 1: A bat's heart can beat over a thousand times a
Speaker 1: minute if they need it to, and their metabolic rate
Speaker 1: in the air increases thirty four times. When you compare
Speaker 1: that to rodents, again not the same species, but exercising rodents,
Speaker 1: they only jump up to eight times their metabolic rate.
Speaker 1: When your metabolism is as ramped up as bats are,
Speaker 1: it spews out free radicals, and these are energetic particles
Speaker 1: that can damage cells and kickstart inflammation. So it's possible
Speaker 1: that bats evolved specifically for flight and that that just
Speaker 1: casually also allows them to avoid overreacting to viral infections. Now,
Speaker 1: another note on vampire bats. I think we've touched on
Speaker 1: this in the past, and we've discussed real world vampires,
Speaker 1: but but this makes the vampire bat situation even crazier.
Speaker 1: They have this crazy metabolism to deal with the costs
Speaker 1: of high costs of powered flight, and they're depending on
Speaker 1: the nutrient deprived feast of blood power everything. Right. This
Speaker 1: is like if you met somebody and you sit and
Speaker 1: you ask them, hey, what are you into and what
Speaker 1: do you do for a living and they say, well, uh,
Speaker 1: I have I have a hobby of mine is just
Speaker 1: collecting really expensive wines, and my profession is hot dog
Speaker 1: photography only hot dog photography. And you're like, ooh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, guy, that sounds like you've got a really
Speaker 1: expensive hobby and and an extremely specific career here that
Speaker 1: I can't imagine pays the dividends necessary. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the idea about the bat immune system seems to be
Speaker 1: supported when we look at their mitochondria. It seems that
Speaker 1: their mitochondria has undergone more evolutionary changes than the mitochondria
Speaker 1: that's in other mammals. Individual bats have an assortment of
Speaker 1: mitochondria rather than the way that most organisms like us
Speaker 1: have just carbon copies of it. This seems to help
Speaker 1: them deal with the damaging free radicals that are produced
Speaker 1: during flight, all of which can explain their long lives.
Speaker 1: The tumor resistance and more. Bat mitochondria also might be
Speaker 1: like these crucial command centers that sent and decide whether
Speaker 1: a cell should fight or just self destruct. So they've
Speaker 1: got they've really got this, like, uh, you know, to
Speaker 1: use the same metaphor that we're using in this week's
Speaker 1: Demon episode, like they've got a great home security system
Speaker 1: when it's all like you know, in terms of dealing
Speaker 1: with viruses, dealing with the metabolic breakdown in their system, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Another hypothesis that's related to bat flight, though generate, is
Speaker 1: that they generate so much heat that it actually mimics
Speaker 1: a fever. Now, you know, fever's combat infection by raising
Speaker 1: our body temperature to levels that will kill or disable
Speaker 1: any invading pathogen. But maybe bat's body temperatures are so
Speaker 1: high when they fly that they're just inadvertently killing viruses off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting take on on bat immunities. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a two thousand fifteen study Publishment Biology Letters that
Speaker 1: that hypothesize that a lot of it, I could come
Speaker 1: down to these drastic temperature changes over the course of
Speaker 1: just a single day. So a bat sleeps in the day,
Speaker 1: temperature drops to conserve energy, then slows the pathogen spread
Speaker 1: in the process, and then it goes out to hunt,
Speaker 1: in which case it's temperatures exceed a hundred degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: And this which basically involves a daily fever to increase
Speaker 1: the activity of certain immune sets. Yeah, so the fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff that uh, is not incorporated into Batman lawyer. Batman
Speaker 1: doesn't have a fever, or he's not like burning up
Speaker 1: with he's burning up with rage at the death of
Speaker 1: his parents. That's true. Now here's another interesting thing about
Speaker 1: bat metabolism. So they're heterotherms, meaning they can exhibit characteristics
Speaker 1: of both warm and cold blooded organisms. But they're distinct
Speaker 1: from all other heterotherms in that, no matter what the
Speaker 1: season they're resting temperature and metabolic rate is dependent on
Speaker 1: a non ambient temperature. They're the only mammals in which
Speaker 1: the resting metabolism is a direct function of the body
Speaker 1: temperature rather than the ambient temperature. And that came from
Speaker 1: an article by Raymond J. Hawk, the metabolic rates and
Speaker 1: body temperatures of bats. And some of you are probably wondering, well, okay,
Speaker 1: bats fly, but so do all those other creatures that
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier. What about birds? You know, do birds
Speaker 1: have the same superpower? Well, birds are also long lived,
Speaker 1: and that's possibly because flight enables them to just evade predators.
Speaker 1: But uh, it's also because flight increase their chances of
Speaker 1: developing a mechanism to reduce cellular damage. Very similar, right,
Speaker 1: So the metabolic thing is similar. I don't know necessarily
Speaker 1: that the body temperature thing equals out, probably because uh,
Speaker 1: we're talking about mammals versus birds, totally different anatomies. Either way,
Speaker 1: some scientists still worry that bat born viruses are so
Speaker 1: lethal because they've evolved to withstand the bats incredibly active
Speaker 1: immune system. But if they transferred humans, right, so, like
Speaker 1: rabies or a bola, these viruses are super well at
Speaker 1: whip to defeat our weaker immune systems. So subsequently, that's
Speaker 1: why we have such a hard time dealing with these Wow.
Speaker 1: So in in the Dune universe, the bat would be
Speaker 1: like a hell world where you where you evolve and
Speaker 1: develop a highly effective mode of shock troops. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: let's take another break, and when we get back, we're
Speaker 1: going to close out by talking about, hey, don't kill
Speaker 1: those bats because we might be able to use them
Speaker 1: to lead to improvements in our health. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: so so hit me, Christian, how how can we potentially
Speaker 1: become more bat like? Am I gonna need a telepod
Speaker 1: and a bat and we're going to splice ourselves together
Speaker 1: into a man bat? Yeah? You know, that seems like
Speaker 1: one way that would work pretty well. But it would
Speaker 1: you know, like like with Man bat you would kind
Speaker 1: of like lose total control of your personality and probably
Speaker 1: murder your wife. But uh, and you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: do the Batman thing because, like we said, Batman, it's
Speaker 1: just a guy in a cost you him. He's got
Speaker 1: some gadgets. He's not really uh you know, cranking up
Speaker 1: the metabolism. He isn't ever great immune system man Bat
Speaker 1: for anyone listening is not familiar is of the the
Speaker 1: bat human hybrid in the Batman comics. I remember, he's
Speaker 1: kind of what you think of when you first hear
Speaker 1: Batman's that, like he would it's like a wear bat
Speaker 1: with like a ripped blue jeans totally. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: as a result of recent viruses, whole bat colonies are
Speaker 1: being killed off in the name of public health, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, and experts say, look, we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: afraid of bats because the viruses they carry comparatively hardly
Speaker 1: ever transmit to human beings. In fact, killing bats may
Speaker 1: make things worse. Like I mentioned, the stress on the
Speaker 1: remaining bats could actually raise their viral loads, which could
Speaker 1: lead to more transference to other animals. But what if
Speaker 1: bats could hold the key to improving human health and
Speaker 1: allowing us to live longer. Well, if we look at
Speaker 1: knowledge and we try to figure it out how their
Speaker 1: immune systems work, and that leads to the development of
Speaker 1: drugs that would improve our health and lifespan, that's one
Speaker 1: way that we could do it. So we basically reverse
Speaker 1: engineer those proteins and then we turn it into medicine,
Speaker 1: or we could use gene editing technology to make human
Speaker 1: genomes more like bats, which would give us similar immune
Speaker 1: system properties. Although I have to wonder if there would
Speaker 1: be some kind of like drawback with that in the
Speaker 1: sense that like, if your metabolism was that fast but
Speaker 1: you weren't flying all the time, wouldn't you just be
Speaker 1: constantly like hungry, I mean, so you'd have to eat
Speaker 1: a lot more. Um. Maybe that's where we start eating bugs.
Speaker 1: Researchers are also trying to identify the proteins that specifically
Speaker 1: allow bats to control inflammation and other processes that are
Speaker 1: associated with disease. So it's possible that we could one
Speaker 1: day use these proteins or a version of them to
Speaker 1: treat disorders where inflammation is a problem, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: rheumatoid arthritis or heart disease. So we could use these
Speaker 1: to stop viruses like a bola also from killing us. Like,
Speaker 1: if we figure out how the bat system works, then
Speaker 1: we apply it to the human anatomy system, we could
Speaker 1: potentially be resistant to a bola and rabies in the
Speaker 1: same way that they are, or maybe other viruses that
Speaker 1: we haven't even discovered yet. So to bring it back
Speaker 1: to Batman, you do have to to I guess acknowledge
Speaker 1: that Batman, if nothing else, he's long lived, He's resistant
Speaker 1: to illness and death. You have if you've taken to
Speaker 1: account of the character hit comic book stands for the
Speaker 1: first time in nine and assuming Wayne was what at
Speaker 1: least twenty at the time, He's still going strong today
Speaker 1: at close to a hundred over a hundred years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck doesn't look good day over nine. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that speaks to the power of the mythology I
Speaker 1: think of Batman in popular culture for sure, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely it seems like Batman and other superheroes are
Speaker 1: certainly long lived, but there's no explanation in the the
Speaker 1: the meta text of why Batman has been around for
Speaker 1: so long right, even in like some of them, Like
Speaker 1: there's a do you remember Batman Beyond that cartoon that
Speaker 1: was like set in the future. Yeah, and he's so
Speaker 1: now you have the old Bruce Wayne. Because this is
Speaker 1: gonna be my next question. What is the oldest depiction
Speaker 1: of Bruce Wayne and or Batman in a comic book
Speaker 1: or cartoon? Yeah, I think it's that um and in
Speaker 1: that Even then, he's still kind of a badass, uh
Speaker 1: in the bat Dog comes up in that because he's
Speaker 1: got a um ace. The bath Hound hangs out with
Speaker 1: him in the cave all the time. But there's also
Speaker 1: another depiction. I think it's in Kingdom Come, which is
Speaker 1: a sort of alternate universe story. Again older Batman, but
Speaker 1: he like we're more like sort of like an Iron
Speaker 1: Man armor version of like the Batman's suit that allows
Speaker 1: him to go out and uh fight crime and deal
Speaker 1: with other superheroes and stuff. Old dude in a power
Speaker 1: armors basically Yeah, okay, interesting, alright, but none of it
Speaker 1: had to do with his metabolism or gene editing. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: well there you have it. We've talked about the bats,
Speaker 1: bats and diseases. We've gone back and forth a little
Speaker 1: bit about Batman, and now we we leave it to you,
Speaker 1: we ask you for feedback. Yeah, so you know, let
Speaker 1: us know. I want to make sure that we gave
Speaker 1: bats a fair shake. Let us know if you feel
Speaker 1: that that was the case. Let us know if you
Speaker 1: like bats or if you you know, you think we're
Speaker 1: totally wrong here and you're like, all bats must be annihilated. Right. Also,
Speaker 1: look to Facebook because we're probably going to be doing
Speaker 1: a Facebook live about I would imagine Demons and Bats
Speaker 1: that week that these episodes come out related to trailers
Speaker 1: of movies that have bats in them. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that bat movie that had Um Lou Diamond Phillips in it,
Speaker 1: who was literally called just bats. No, I don't think
Speaker 1: remember that came out in the nineties. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty terrible horror movie. We might have to pull that
Speaker 1: one out, man. I can think of at least a
Speaker 1: couple of that related to our films for the Path.
Speaker 1: It would be fun to discuss. I think. I think
Speaker 1: we've got a good trailer talk coming up for us.
Speaker 1: So if you like watching those, or if you've never
Speaker 1: seen one before, tune in on Facebook. You don't have
Speaker 1: to watch it when it's live. It'll sit on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page. Usually Robert, Joe and I sitting around for
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes talking about the science related to this
Speaker 1: week's episodes, tying into our favorite monster movie trailers, so
Speaker 1: you can find that on our Facebook page. You can
Speaker 1: also contact us through Facebook. We're also on Twitter, We're
Speaker 1: on tumbler, We're on Instagram. We've also got stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your Mind dot com, where there's all those bat
Speaker 1: podcasts that Julie and Robert did in the past. If
Speaker 1: you want to just binge listen to bad information, we
Speaker 1: got it. And if you want to get touch with
Speaker 1: us the old fashioned way, just hit us up at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at house stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com