Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Wow, hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison I don't know if the science editor
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writer at how stuff works dot com. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about bats this week. Um, that's in danger. My
Speaker 1: last encounter with bats really because I mean, I know
Speaker 1: they're around, but I don't really see them. Um. But
Speaker 1: the last time I really had an experience with bats
Speaker 1: was when I was on my honeymoon. Um and my
Speaker 1: wife were in Yalapa, Mexico, near Puerta Viata, and it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful place and they have all these like huts
Speaker 1: that you stay in, and um, we we noticed when
Speaker 1: we got in that they were at the top of
Speaker 1: the hut. Say, these like plastic screens, um, blocking off
Speaker 1: the outside and the first without I guess they you know,
Speaker 1: just forgot to put a window up there that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it is raining. We found out later it's such
Speaker 1: an optimist dress. Uh. I found out later that these
Speaker 1: were to keep the fruit bats from coming in because
Speaker 1: the fruit bats will like fly around on the island
Speaker 1: and they'll apparently get like eat just gorge themselves on
Speaker 1: fruit and then go shack up wherever they can find cover,
Speaker 1: and if they can get inside one of these huts,
Speaker 1: they'll do it, and they'll just hang up in there
Speaker 1: and then just crap all over the place during during
Speaker 1: the during their stay there. So like people would were
Speaker 1: staying here, you know often I'm thinking on you know,
Speaker 1: romantic getaways or their their honeymoon or some special vacation,
Speaker 1: and it takes a lot of trouble to get there
Speaker 1: if you're going this like little boat is this really
Speaker 1: jarring open boat ride to get there, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you put your stut luggage inside, leave to hit the beach,
Speaker 1: come back and there's backuana over everything. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: the way to kick off on honeymoon. But luckily our
Speaker 1: we didn't encounter that. We just encountered plagues of crabs
Speaker 1: every night. Oh, like the crabs you mentioned an amazing
Speaker 1: infestation about like that, Like lots and lots of crabs.
Speaker 1: It's like crawling around. You had to just get in
Speaker 1: the bed at night and just not get out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my bad experiences are are not nearly so exciting. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember growing up in the Northeast we'd be hanging out,
Speaker 1: maybe playing a game of kickballs. The sun was setting
Speaker 1: and the bats would start to come out, being primarily
Speaker 1: nocturnal creatures, and we did this weird thing where we
Speaker 1: would throw our shoes up into the air to see
Speaker 1: if the bats would go after them, and they would,
Speaker 1: you know, they would fly flat out and dive bomb
Speaker 1: for shoes. But they never and they never picked him up.
Speaker 1: I mentioned our shoes probably I never saw that, you know,
Speaker 1: fly away with one of my shoes on. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty much my bad experience. I've heard of
Speaker 1: people jumping on trampolines before, and if they're jumping on
Speaker 1: them eyed or around dusk, that their their hair will
Speaker 1: fly up in the air and the bats will come
Speaker 1: in like dive in their hair. That that's enough to
Speaker 1: if you need another reason not to jump on a trampoline,
Speaker 1: there you go. So Unfortunately for the insect eating bats,
Speaker 1: there's a pretty serious bat plague going around that you
Speaker 1: may have heard about because it's been around I think
Speaker 1: since two thousand five, two thousand and six in the winter.
Speaker 1: They basically a caver discovered this right here, Yeah, as
Speaker 1: a caver up in upstate New York. I think in
Speaker 1: a house cave near Albany, New York, and this caver
Speaker 1: took the first known pictures of them of bats with
Speaker 1: what they're calling white nose syndrome. Yeah, they're just there's
Speaker 1: a number of bats in there. They've got this white
Speaker 1: stuff in their nose. Some of them were kind of emaciated,
Speaker 1: some of them were dead. And people get to figure
Speaker 1: out that there's something wrong here. Yeah, and it's not
Speaker 1: just something, it's it's a pretty darn big deal because
Speaker 1: more than a million bats have died so far, and
Speaker 1: at least three endangered species, the the Indiana bat, their
Speaker 1: Virginia figured bat, and possibly the gray bat are at risk.
Speaker 1: And so this, this white nose syndrome is causing a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble in northeastern bat populations. And the syndrome
Speaker 1: is actually related to a fungus. And you like, you
Speaker 1: like the name of particular fungus, So why don't you say, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's if I can pronounce it, it's uh Geo Micys destructions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty serious name. Could be it could be the
Speaker 1: name of a metal band. So it's thought to be
Speaker 1: a non native pathogen that it was recently introduced to
Speaker 1: the United States and it's actually, um, it's related to
Speaker 1: geo mic s panora, which causes skin infections and humans.
Speaker 1: That also would make a good I think a band
Speaker 1: name saying yeah, what was the other band name that
Speaker 1: you're that you came up with? Oh? Um? Yeah. The
Speaker 1: the place where a the area of the cave where
Speaker 1: the bat that holds up and for the winter is
Speaker 1: called hybernacular or it's a hybernaculum hybernacular, it's the plural.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's like if you if you're out there
Speaker 1: right now and you have a death metal band and
Speaker 1: you're like, what are we gonna call ourselves hyberna hybernaculum,
Speaker 1: that's what you need to go with. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: um back to geo mics destruct ends the other band name.
Speaker 1: So so far, white nose syndrome has only been found
Speaker 1: in the insect eating cave hibernating bats. They haven't found
Speaker 1: it in bats that use like buildings or other manmade structures.
Speaker 1: Um and biologists don't think it's actually gonna be found
Speaker 1: in urban environments. Bats with this particular syndrome, aside from
Speaker 1: looking like they've been eating powdered donuts, are doing lines
Speaker 1: or whatever it is these bats have been up to.
Speaker 1: They have they have skin ulcers that the fungus causes,
Speaker 1: and like Robert said before, they're you know, really really skinny.
Speaker 1: And what happens is they're hibernating patterns are disrupted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they started flying out to like eat bugs in the
Speaker 1: dead of winter. Yeah, this is going to happen. Right,
Speaker 1: That's not gonna happen. You know what this reminded me
Speaker 1: of I am sometimes I read to one of my
Speaker 1: kids this. Don't you ever hear the book Blueberries for
Speaker 1: sal Okay, So there's this book and salad, her mom McCloskey,
Speaker 1: Robert McCloskey, one like a caldicot. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: one of these classic kids books. So they go out,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're they're picking blueberries, um sound and
Speaker 1: her mom and there's a mother bear and a baby
Speaker 1: bear who are eating berries just to start up for
Speaker 1: the winter. And so I kind of just imagine, you
Speaker 1: know what, if you know, grizzly bear woke up out
Speaker 1: of its hibernation and you know, started crashing around the
Speaker 1: winter trying to find these berries, It's not going to happen, right,
Speaker 1: So the same deal with the bats, so they're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to find their favorite prey, which is insects.
Speaker 1: So it's disrupting their behavior as well as it's like
Speaker 1: hurting their minds as well as their bodies. I say,
Speaker 1: the fund is ultimately could cause them to to die
Speaker 1: by way of starvation. So biolog just likely think that
Speaker 1: um white nose syndrome is spreading from environments to bats,
Speaker 1: and then from bats to bats because they live in
Speaker 1: these crazy close quarters, you know, with thousands upon thousands
Speaker 1: of bats, and they're they're keeping actually encouraging cavers to
Speaker 1: uh spelunkers to stay out of these caves as well, right,
Speaker 1: because we might be part of the problem spreading it
Speaker 1: from one cave environment to another. Yeah, so the US
Speaker 1: for Service cracked down. They closed like thousands of caves
Speaker 1: and two thousand nine and they're trying to also see
Speaker 1: about like raising some in captivity to sort of safeguard
Speaker 1: the popular lations. But left we heard it hasn't actually
Speaker 1: been working all that well. Yeah, the National Zoo which
Speaker 1: awarded some funds to raise a Virginia big eared bats,
Speaker 1: one of the endangered species of bats that they're worried about, say,
Speaker 1: they had a population of forty and I think they
Speaker 1: are left with eleven. It's just really tricky, like they
Speaker 1: don't know how to raise bats in captivity. They're having
Speaker 1: trouble getting the bats to eat from these you know,
Speaker 1: trays with little worms on them. Yeah, it's just not
Speaker 1: not their natural way of doing things at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't really have enough to get a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids um or you know, your childhood friends out there
Speaker 1: throwing bugs up in the air form. That's what's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Shoes shoes full of worms. So they think about white
Speaker 1: nose syndrome is that there's no cure for it, so
Speaker 1: we really just have to contain its spread. Right. Another
Speaker 1: tricky thing about bats is that they're really susceptible to
Speaker 1: extinction because of the way they reproduce. Each female has
Speaker 1: one baby bat like per per cycle, so I mean
Speaker 1: it's per year, per year, so it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you one female bat dies, that's going to really cut
Speaker 1: into the into their population. Uh. They're also long living.
Speaker 1: They live about what thirty years, so so yeah, they're
Speaker 1: some Some animals that reproduced at a greater rate wouldn't
Speaker 1: be as though as hard hit by this like a bunny. Yeah, bunnies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's really unfair. Why are there no bunny diseases
Speaker 1: going around? White bunny knows? Isn't there that one? What
Speaker 1: is it called tolmia? What happens when you live in Atlanta?
Speaker 1: Like capital of public health? Um? So, the bottom line
Speaker 1: about this fungal infection is that they're not sure if
Speaker 1: by itself it's causing the bats to die. They've tested
Speaker 1: some infected bats because they want to know if the
Speaker 1: infection is occurring with other stuff like viruses or bacteria
Speaker 1: or parasites, but they haven't found anything yet. It could
Speaker 1: be something that's affecting their they're immune function and making
Speaker 1: them more suscepted, susceptible to this white fungus. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is just because they've tested for known organisms,
Speaker 1: does I mean that there's not some new virus out
Speaker 1: there that is a at work in the bats and
Speaker 1: the insect eating bats, Which is another reason to keep
Speaker 1: cabs and spelkers away because you never know when one
Speaker 1: of these are gonna make the jump from one species
Speaker 1: to another. Oh, they're so far they don't think that
Speaker 1: white nose syndrome is harmful to humans. So far. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, no, don't be doing that. I don't want
Speaker 1: you to go spreading false alarm. So I do want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about fungal infections because they're
Speaker 1: pretty freaking interesting. Um. The thing about them, like we
Speaker 1: were just saying, is that they're opportunistic, right, So of
Speaker 1: course the fungus can cause diseases in people who have
Speaker 1: regular old immune systems. Um, Like there's one in Arizona.
Speaker 1: You know that's transmitted through the dust. You know, if
Speaker 1: you breathe in the soil, it's it's transmitted by that.
Speaker 1: You wind up with pulmonary problems and breathing problems whatever.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times you'll find fungal infection occurring
Speaker 1: people with subpart immune system. Say you have a person
Speaker 1: with AIDS whose white blood cell count has fallen pretty
Speaker 1: darn low all of a sudden, some running them all. Um,
Speaker 1: fungal infections, say, like thresh is going to start giving
Speaker 1: you all sorts of headaches. But one of the most
Speaker 1: feared fungal infection stems from Cryptococcus so after TV cryptococlemaningius
Speaker 1: has emerged as one of these like crazy fungal infections
Speaker 1: that is really just dealing the final blow to patients
Speaker 1: with AIDS. So it's kind of a cain if you
Speaker 1: imagine this um in bats, you know, imagine that there's
Speaker 1: something at work in the in the bats immune system,
Speaker 1: and then maybe this white nose syndrome is dealing the
Speaker 1: final blow. The bottom line is they don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: at least in people with fungal infections, they can treat
Speaker 1: them with anti fungals or you know, if you have AIDS,
Speaker 1: you can treat them with anti ritro vils. But how
Speaker 1: are we going to do that with bats? Good luck?
Speaker 1: You might be asking yourself if you're not just a
Speaker 1: natural animal lover and bat lover, um, like, why do
Speaker 1: we care? Why are we sinking money into this um?
Speaker 1: And the reason is that bats, in addition to just
Speaker 1: being you know, fantastic, they eat a lot of insects.
Speaker 1: That's um. I mean, they they play an important role
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem. And what they do is they eat
Speaker 1: lots of insects and they also inspired Batman. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but Batman will still be here. These guys go the
Speaker 1: way of the But the little brown bat, one of
Speaker 1: the most common North American bat species, can catch and
Speaker 1: eat as many as twelve mosquitoes in one hour. The
Speaker 1: famous colony of Mexican treetail bats that lives underneath the
Speaker 1: Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas will eat up to
Speaker 1: thirty thousand pounds of insects in a single night. That'd
Speaker 1: be like, um, I mean, I don't even know the
Speaker 1: mathematical proportions there, but I mean it sounds like like
Speaker 1: if you just hit the buffet every evening and just
Speaker 1: loaded up on like General Sis chicken. Yeah, these guys
Speaker 1: are still flying around for the whole night. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think humans could walk if they ate this much,
Speaker 1: noting the kmmoto dragon could maybe do it, definitely, the
Speaker 1: Commodo dragon could do it. Agriculturally speaking, Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of these are pasts that harmer crops. So if you
Speaker 1: don't have bats there too to take care of them,
Speaker 1: then how are you gonna get rid of them? What
Speaker 1: are you gonna spread more DDT around? Which, in addition
Speaker 1: to being rather harmful um to the environment, yet a
Speaker 1: number of these insects have have evolved resistances to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you remove the bats from the equation and things
Speaker 1: could get a little dicier agriculturally speaking, But I should
Speaker 1: stress that it's not exactly bats alone or controlling mosquito
Speaker 1: populations or insect populations. It is sort of a multi
Speaker 1: pronged approach. Yeah, I mean it's again, it's like they're
Speaker 1: a part of the ecosystem. The ecosystem is like this
Speaker 1: big Jenga puzzle, and if you start removing a little,
Speaker 1: um little blocks from the Jenga tower, then the tower
Speaker 1: is gonna get unstable. Yeah, especially if you play Jengo
Speaker 1: with your feet. Yeah, which have you read that that
Speaker 1: we tried one, So it's really hard. Yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a disaster. Yeah, but you know it's Jengo, so
Speaker 1: it's not like anything's kind of like it sounds like
Speaker 1: an analogy. It's like when you just playing Jenga with
Speaker 1: your feet on that way. Yeah, maybe, well, suicide from
Speaker 1: agricult actual implications. There are also implications for public health,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine. So mosquitoes like to carry diseases
Speaker 1: such as malaria or rest nile. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: if you have a booming mosquito population, um, we could
Speaker 1: see an uptick in those kind of diseases and humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can actually purchase bat houses to encourage
Speaker 1: bats to live in your property so they'll eat the mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: You know. I would like to have one, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really want to get one of those. And I
Speaker 1: want to get an owl house because I like hav
Speaker 1: an owls. About maybe a woodpacker house. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Whatever I can have flying around eating bugs is good.
Speaker 1: So what can we do about white nose syndrome? Well,
Speaker 1: you know there are a couple of things. Um, we
Speaker 1: could try to contain the spread, as the US Force
Speaker 1: Services done, you know, closing caves and things like that.
Speaker 1: And we can always throw some money at the problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and encourage your your lawmakers to support funding, and we
Speaker 1: can try to learn how to raise endangered bats and
Speaker 1: captivity fast as the Smithsonian Zoo is doing with sort
Speaker 1: of mixed Look. Hey, actually you can even blog about it.
Speaker 1: There's the There was a white nose blog hosted by
Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I did check it out.
Speaker 1: There was only one entry. It was really cute though.
Speaker 1: She was a biologist and she was she put you
Speaker 1: know her the bats like that would really be more
Speaker 1: interesting for blogging. It was a biologist blogging about bats.
Speaker 1: Try saying that ten times fast. And you also can
Speaker 1: can help out in the in the bat fight. You
Speaker 1: can report active winter or summer roosting sides. You can
Speaker 1: if you see bats flying around in the winter like
Speaker 1: a bunch of them, not like a loane bat, but
Speaker 1: like a bunch of bats, you need to contact somebody,
Speaker 1: your local wildlife service. And you know, you could always
Speaker 1: build a bad house, especially since that we most of
Speaker 1: these cases have been isolated caves. The more bad houses
Speaker 1: the better. So in case all of this doesn't really
Speaker 1: make you care about bats, then we are. Our final
Speaker 1: point is what about that i guano? Baguano, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, is an amazingly useful substance. Yeah, it plays
Speaker 1: a vital role in cave ecologies. Um, I imagine everybody's
Speaker 1: seen the television series Planet Earth from a few years back,
Speaker 1: same people who made Life, Yeah, I which we wrote
Speaker 1: a whole lot of content around. But there's a whole
Speaker 1: episode about the ecology inside a particular cave and there's
Speaker 1: like just a mountain of bat guando and and like
Speaker 1: their insects live live that live off the guano and
Speaker 1: live in the guano. Um, yeah, take that away, you know,
Speaker 1: remove the bats from the equation, and there are a
Speaker 1: number of other species that depend on the bats. It's
Speaker 1: like the snake. Like the snake. There's a snake that
Speaker 1: jumps out of like like like he's blind and he
Speaker 1: like here's the bat flying by, and it will just
Speaker 1: strike out and like grab it bat out of midair.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. That is pretty amazing. Yeah, So bat guano
Speaker 1: is actually pretty useful for its nitrogen. It's pretty nitrogen heavy,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty useful when it comes to you know,
Speaker 1: say making a bomb, making household cleaner. Oh yeah, Actually
Speaker 1: two things on that. First of all, I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: there's a part in Coral McCarthy's Blood Meridian where they
Speaker 1: they're being trailed by these by one tribe or another,
Speaker 1: these bunch of this ragtag bunch of cowboys and uh
Speaker 1: and they they're completely out of ammo and they end
Speaker 1: up like hitting up a cave and like scraping up
Speaker 1: all this back wando um. And then they then they
Speaker 1: think they go to like a volcano, and then they
Speaker 1: start and they get some more ingredients to make gunpowder,
Speaker 1: and they like put it all together the last minute
Speaker 1: and fight off the villains slowing their all villains in
Speaker 1: that book. But then, um, and as far as it
Speaker 1: being a cleaning agent that I guess could maybe be
Speaker 1: used to uh to one's advantage in places like Lapa.
Speaker 1: You encourage the bats to come in to use the
Speaker 1: restroom on everything, and then you've got a natural cleaning
Speaker 1: agent right there, right then you don't have to hire
Speaker 1: somebody to do it. You just you know, and get
Speaker 1: the bats, get them to scrub, and then you've got
Speaker 1: it taken care of. Good points, Robert. So if you
Speaker 1: want to hear more, you can come check out the
Speaker 1: blogs on the homepage, where you can find out what
Speaker 1: our podcast for the week or about, and learn about
Speaker 1: other bits of weird science e news. Yeah, any know
Speaker 1: is shoot just a comment too. We love to hear
Speaker 1: from you, um, whether you have a question about bats
Speaker 1: or white nose syndrome or a suggestion for a podcast,
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