Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bam Here. New words and
Speaker 1: meanings are entering our lexicon all the time. The Oxford
Speaker 1: English Dictionary, for example, updates with hundreds or thousands of
Speaker 1: new and revised entries every quarter of every year, and
Speaker 1: one entry that was updated in a special unscheduled release
Speaker 1: by Miriam Webster in March was social distancing. And although
Speaker 1: this term continues to be sadly relevant for us here
Speaker 1: at the beginning of two, it turns out that we're
Speaker 1: not the only ones keeping our distance. A study published
Speaker 1: in Behavioral Ecology in October showed the vampire bats distanced
Speaker 1: themselves from healthy bats when they're sick. Previous research has
Speaker 1: shown similar findings with different animals in a lab setting,
Speaker 1: but to get the same results in the wild was
Speaker 1: quote really cool. That's according to Simon Rippager, the studies
Speaker 1: lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Ohio State
Speaker 1: University or o s U for the article This episode
Speaker 1: is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with Ripprager in
Speaker 1: he said there are similar reports from mice, for example,
Speaker 1: that act similar to vampire bats, but also social insects
Speaker 1: and lobsters and all kinds of animals. It's really exciting
Speaker 1: to see that experiments from the lab and in the
Speaker 1: wild give the same results. For their study, researchers from
Speaker 1: os U and the University of Texas at Austin traveled
Speaker 1: to Belize in April, where they found a hollow tree
Speaker 1: with a vampire back colony. They blocked every exit from
Speaker 1: the tree but one and used a hand neet to
Speaker 1: cover this exit. The team then captured thirty one female
Speaker 1: vampire bats and injected sixteen of them with a substance
Speaker 1: that made them feel sick but didn't give the bats
Speaker 1: any disease. The substance kicked in after three hours and
Speaker 1: lasted for around six to twelve hours. They injected the
Speaker 1: other roll group of bats was saline as a placebo.
Speaker 1: This didn't make the bats feel sick, but controlled for
Speaker 1: any effects that the act of being injected might have had.
Speaker 1: Then they glued miniature computer sensors to the backs of
Speaker 1: every bat before returning them to their home. Ripeter said,
Speaker 1: the sensors started collecting data on associations all these tiny backpacks.
Speaker 1: They talked to each other, and we know seven who
Speaker 1: has been near whom. A technology like this will help
Speaker 1: researchers get rich data sets and a deeper understanding of
Speaker 1: the consequences such pathogen spreads in populations. For three days,
Speaker 1: researchers tracked the bats movements and social encounters in real
Speaker 1: time during these six hour treatment period, and the scientists
Speaker 1: found the sick bats spent twenty five fewer minutes interacting
Speaker 1: and socialized with four fewer bats than their healthy groupmates
Speaker 1: did during the treatment period. Also, the healthy bats had
Speaker 1: a forty nine chance of associating with a healthy bat,
Speaker 1: while the sick bats only had a thirty five percent
Speaker 1: chance of associating with another sick bat. While the control
Speaker 1: bats normally associated for fifteen minutes an hour, the sick
Speaker 1: and healthy bats only associated for ten minutes each hour.
Speaker 1: A Rippeture said, we saw increased sleep and reduced movements
Speaker 1: in the sick bats. Changes in behavior can really change
Speaker 1: how a pathogen spreads, and that is why health experts
Speaker 1: have advised us to socially distanced during the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 1: Social distancing means keeping a safe space of at least
Speaker 1: six feet or about two meters or two arms length
Speaker 1: between you and people who are not in your household,
Speaker 1: and social distancing can reduce the spread of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: when then infected person coughs, sneeze, or talks, because the
Speaker 1: odds of a droplet landing in your mouth or nose
Speaker 1: is reduced. If you wear a mask, it helps even more.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article socially distancing when
Speaker 1: ill is natural Just look at pire bats on house
Speaker 1: toworks dot com, written by Francisco Guzman. Brain Stuff is
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