Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show on the
Speaker 1: Origin of feces, we'll find that determining the origin of
Speaker 1: poop can be incredibly important for evolutionary biology and even conservation.
Speaker 1: From discovering the origins of butts defining the mystery pooper
Speaker 1: at zoos, it turns out that poop can teach us
Speaker 1: a lot about animals. And later I'll be joined by
Speaker 1: the real life Batman of Mexico, Dr. Rodrigo Medelline to
Speaker 1: talk about glowing poop and long nose bats. But first
Speaker 1: joining me today to talk about all sorts of craft
Speaker 1: is friend of the show, podcast producer and writer Joel
Speaker 1: Monique Cog. Thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker 1: I'm elity to talk about poop bal d Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: excited about this one. Excited that you're here to talk
Speaker 1: about poop with me. So poop is not always just disgusting.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it is a scientific marvel and it actually teaches
Speaker 1: us a lot about animals and uh, later on in
Speaker 1: the show, we're gonna talk about glowing bat poop, which
Speaker 1: is super exciting. I already did the interview, uh and
Speaker 1: I think it's really fun, So so be pumped for
Speaker 1: that everyone. But first we're going to talk about one
Speaker 1: of the world's earliest poopers, very ancient animal called the
Speaker 1: comb jelly. Have you ever seen a comb jelly? But
Speaker 1: I'm googling right now? Is it okay for the listeners? See? Oh,
Speaker 1: corn jelly, come jelly, comb jelly com c l n
Speaker 1: e j l y No, no comb like a hair comb,
Speaker 1: homb jelly. I just want you to know that if
Speaker 1: you type and comb jelly, Google knows what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It will direct you to the right page. Oh oh
Speaker 1: they're beautiful. Yes, they look ancient, they look like aliens.
Speaker 1: They are clearly about that pride because they glow rainbow tendrils. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little late for Pride months, but hey, every month
Speaker 1: should be Pride months, and it never ends unless you're
Speaker 1: a corporation. Here Pride all the right exactly. Corporations took
Speaker 1: down their pride flags already, not not comb jellies. It's
Speaker 1: Pride year for comb jellies. But yeah, they are beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful marine invertebrates. They may look a little bit like jellyfish,
Speaker 1: but they're actually not jellyfish. They're not They're not a
Speaker 1: what a jellyfish is called, like a Nigerian. They're actually
Speaker 1: in the phylum Tinophora. And instead of using undulation like
Speaker 1: jellyfish use to move, they have a bunch of cilia,
Speaker 1: which are tiny mobile hairs lining their spaceship like bodies.
Speaker 1: So there's shape kind of like a spaceship, like a
Speaker 1: transparent alien spaceship that has led lights, shimmering rainbow l
Speaker 1: e d s that just like going sort of a
Speaker 1: wave down their backs, and that's actually the silly and
Speaker 1: moving in synchrony, and as the light refracts off the cilia,
Speaker 1: it looks just like led lights going down like you
Speaker 1: know those Christmas lights that kind of go in a
Speaker 1: wave where like one light trends on in the next
Speaker 1: and prossessionally lights. Yes, exactly, that's what these look like.
Speaker 1: And that's because of these hairs waving in this wave
Speaker 1: so that they can move forward. But then the light
Speaker 1: refracts differently, and some of them have bioluminescence, so the
Speaker 1: bioluminescence will then refract differently through these silia as they
Speaker 1: move so they look like a glowing spaceship. It's an
Speaker 1: incredible there, seriously gorgeous features. Star Trek really should have
Speaker 1: been on this already, and maybe they have. I am
Speaker 1: not the most start check knowledgeable person on the planet,
Speaker 1: but they really do look like spaceships, and they really
Speaker 1: are beautiful. I don't want to jump ahead. But I'm
Speaker 1: also seeing something called a blood belly comb jelly. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: do you know about this? Um? Let me look it up.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Oh wow, yeah, no, I I think
Speaker 1: I may have seen these guys before, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know they were called blood belly. It's so, it's okay.
Speaker 1: If you think about the comb jelly as the like
Speaker 1: peaceful pride like gorgeous angular spaceship conquering the cosmos with
Speaker 1: its beauty. Uh, the blood belly is like a evil,
Speaker 1: demented step sister, uh, who will devour your soul. It
Speaker 1: has no qualms about it to survive. Yea, which is
Speaker 1: I think biologically accurate. Now, those are beautiful. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of look like they look sort of like a
Speaker 1: comb jelly, but then they have kind of a kind
Speaker 1: of a pair of balls sort of dangling down and
Speaker 1: back just hanging out with with their weird forbs. You know,
Speaker 1: still very like alien technology like stuff going on. The
Speaker 1: reason I bring them up on this poopisode is that
Speaker 1: we've actually talked about them before on the show the
Speaker 1: episode Think Outside the Butt, where we talked about animals
Speaker 1: that don't have conventional butts, and we talked about a
Speaker 1: species of comb jelly that is one of the only
Speaker 1: animals to not have a permanent anus, where they seem
Speaker 1: to have what's called a transient anus, where they sprout
Speaker 1: a butt wherever they need it. Oh and yeah, which
Speaker 1: is really interesting but exactly, I love that idea, just like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't always need a butt, you just
Speaker 1: get one when you need it. You know, absolutely most
Speaker 1: comb jellies do just have a mouth and an anus.
Speaker 1: But that isn't what scientists originally thought. They used to
Speaker 1: think that comb jellies did not have butts, that they
Speaker 1: only had a mouth and they had no anus. Uh,
Speaker 1: So basically they there is this concept that there is
Speaker 1: a linear progression of the evolutionary development of the butt,
Speaker 1: where you started out with very simple ancient animals like
Speaker 1: comb jellies that would only have one whole mouth and
Speaker 1: they'd eat stuff through the mouth and then vomit it
Speaker 1: back up, and then later on more complex animals started
Speaker 1: to develop the butt. But what seems to actually have
Speaker 1: happened is that comb jellies do have butts, and the
Speaker 1: evolutionary path of the butt is a little more complex,
Speaker 1: where they maybe gained a butt and then like later on,
Speaker 1: some some later animals seem to have lost it, like
Speaker 1: I'm talking about other marine invertebrates. So so there is
Speaker 1: a more circuitous path in terms of the evolution of
Speaker 1: the butt than we used to think, and that paradigm
Speaker 1: the butt haroadign was completely changed by this knowledge that
Speaker 1: comb jellies actually do have butts. That's a serious Joe
Speaker 1: think to laugh about. It's serious because because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it on a human and like could
Speaker 1: have but be on your hand or on your head
Speaker 1: chest but side, but it could have. Yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that we've got a butt on the butt end. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's probably not a coincidence. It has a lot to
Speaker 1: do how we start out as this kind of like
Speaker 1: little like basically a donut and grow from that. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's really interesting how they actually discovered that comb
Speaker 1: jellies do have a butt, because again, the conventional wisdom
Speaker 1: used to be that they did not have an anus,
Speaker 1: that they only had a mouth and they'd eat food
Speaker 1: and basically poop out of their mouths. But I know, gross,
Speaker 1: but more recent researchers found that was probably not true.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it seemed to be that the pastor
Speaker 1: researchers who thought that they like pooped out of their mouth,
Speaker 1: they're actually just kind of throwing up their food because
Speaker 1: these researchers were not feeding them properly, so they would
Speaker 1: feed them improperly and these poor little comb jellies couldn't
Speaker 1: eat the food, so they'd regurgitate it. But when fed
Speaker 1: properly on the right diet of little tiny baby fish,
Speaker 1: these comb jellies were able to eat and poop. And
Speaker 1: for these researchers to demonstrate this very clearly on video.
Speaker 1: But they did is they fed the comb jellyfish genetically
Speaker 1: modified fish fry so baby larval fish that glowed red.
Speaker 1: So have you ever seen glow fish in a pet store? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like a pet smart or something. They're like
Speaker 1: they look like highlighter markles and fish had a baby
Speaker 1: and they're these glowing fish, and people have this constant
Speaker 1: up that that they like inject them with die or something,
Speaker 1: and that's not the case. They actually are genetically modified
Speaker 1: to have this glowing hue. So they have these genetically
Speaker 1: modified fish, and comb jellies will eat small fish, so
Speaker 1: so like larval fish and the comb jellies is diet
Speaker 1: of these glowing red fish. Therefore the comb jelly poop
Speaker 1: would be glowing red. So they could show clearly on
Speaker 1: video them eating the little larval fish, the tiny fish,
Speaker 1: and seeing the fish scales go through the digestive tract
Speaker 1: on the comb jelly and then come out there butt
Speaker 1: all on camera, all in its glowing red glory. The
Speaker 1: thing scientists the animals through. Why are you filming this
Speaker 1: animal pooping that definitely crosses a line. I feel like
Speaker 1: on the list of priorities for comb jellyfish, it's privacy
Speaker 1: is probably pretty low. I'm loving these glow fishes like
Speaker 1: a creola cran box came to life, but like I
Speaker 1: love a fish. I was looking at glowfish teches and
Speaker 1: they have cool color names for all the electric green, sunburst, orange,
Speaker 1: cosmic blue, moon rise, pink, and galactic purple is obviously
Speaker 1: my favorite marvelous mom Just like lipstick colors, Yes, start
Speaker 1: fire red. It always feels like they're going to run
Speaker 1: out of creativity when it, in fact, I feel like
Speaker 1: they're already there. It's they just really are grasping at
Speaker 1: straws when they're trying to name various shades of red
Speaker 1: with lipstick, like cherubic cherry and you know, oh god, um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they ridiculous red, flaming hot, anything that has to
Speaker 1: be with flames, any fire they've done. My favorite red
Speaker 1: in nail polish colors opis waitress red. It is so good.
Speaker 1: If you think about like a nineteen four these waitress
Speaker 1: who had red painted nails, it's exactly color, just bold
Speaker 1: and fun funky. I think I am wearing the color
Speaker 1: red of digested glowfish red from from Perfect. So this
Speaker 1: was great reason. It's it's always amazing to me when
Speaker 1: researchers come up with an idea of you know what,
Speaker 1: we can't it's hard to see their poops, so let's
Speaker 1: just make it glow, which will actually bring up again
Speaker 1: later on in the show when we have our interview
Speaker 1: with Dr Medain, But before that, I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about zoos and the struggles that zookeepers have with
Speaker 1: taking care of animals health, which is sometimes more complicated
Speaker 1: than you would initially think because one thing they have
Speaker 1: to do is they have to keep track of animal
Speaker 1: poop to see like the animals health. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to be a zookeeper anymore, thank you. I would not,
Speaker 1: like I stopped wanting to be a zookeeper as a
Speaker 1: kid when I heard about what penguin poop smelled like,
Speaker 1: because I love the idea of being a zookeeper and
Speaker 1: being with the penguins. But it smells like decomposing fish,
Speaker 1: because that's that's what it is. And it's just I
Speaker 1: already I can't honestly, like, I can't even smell tuna,
Speaker 1: Like can't tuna. I can't smell without like passing out
Speaker 1: like that fishy smells too strong for me. And then
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, if I my my dream job of
Speaker 1: like taking care of penguins, but I would constantly be
Speaker 1: vomiting because of the penguin poop smell, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'll have to appreciate the penguins from Afar,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so poop is very important diagnostic tools for zoos,
Speaker 1: and they will test poop for hormone levels to keep
Speaker 1: track of things like whether an animal is pregnant, whether
Speaker 1: the animal has hit puberty, if it's healthy, if it's
Speaker 1: got a normal hormone levels. But the problem is you
Speaker 1: can't tell one turd from another, like when you when
Speaker 1: you do it, it doesn't come with like a name
Speaker 1: tag like poop this poop courtesy of Katie or whatever
Speaker 1: for example. So if you like want to track say
Speaker 1: like Percy the Polar Bears poop, uh, you don't know
Speaker 1: if it's Percy the polar Bear poop or Penny the
Speaker 1: Polar Bear poop. Who knows who's poop it is? So
Speaker 1: unless you happen to like catch them in the act
Speaker 1: of pooping and then run in and grab the poop.
Speaker 1: But I think there are a lot of protocols. You
Speaker 1: can't just like jump in the polar bear pin right
Speaker 1: after it's done a duty. So it's a lot better
Speaker 1: if you can just wait until they're done pooping and
Speaker 1: then go in when you know when it's safe and
Speaker 1: then grab their poop. But how do you tell the
Speaker 1: poop apart? Joel, you make it, You make it glitter. Yea, yea,
Speaker 1: I love glitter. So to tell the mystery pooper is
Speaker 1: in a zoo, they will give the animal they want
Speaker 1: to track a diet of their normal food with edible glitter.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they use bright, colorful beads. Sometimes they use food coloring.
Speaker 1: These are additives to the food that are harmless, just
Speaker 1: get passed through the digestive system, but it will make
Speaker 1: their poop colorful, sparkle and glittery and easy to spot.
Speaker 1: So they the additive depends on the texture of the food,
Speaker 1: so they'll use food coloring for like wet food. They
Speaker 1: may use beads that they put into like meat, but
Speaker 1: glitter is a really popular one because it's texture. It
Speaker 1: doesn't really change the texture of the food. The animal
Speaker 1: will still want to eat it. So they feed a
Speaker 1: specific animal like a slab of meat that's got some
Speaker 1: glitter in it, and then when they poop it out,
Speaker 1: it's glittery poop, and then they know who'se poop that is.
Speaker 1: I love it. I like the idea of thinking. But
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, oh the blue glitter, great, great leo,
Speaker 1: it's doing good. Next, Oh my gosh. And you know
Speaker 1: somebody who has eaten plenty of glitter, both before it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be and after they started adding it
Speaker 1: onto like cupcakes and things. I agree that it does
Speaker 1: not too much change the texture of your food and
Speaker 1: is still delicious. Joel, I have to ask you, why
Speaker 1: why would you eat glitter? Because I have three and
Speaker 1: I wanted to sparkle on the inside and the outside.
Speaker 1: Didn't make your poops glittering? Don't remember, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: that it did. You ask my mom now, like when
Speaker 1: you were wiping my butt, Uh, you have any ate sparkle?
Speaker 1: I remember eating a crayon when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and you know, they basically just come out. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: on the other end, they're wasty and they just slapped
Speaker 1: right out and it will be the color of the
Speaker 1: cranny eat. So, children, that's not an invitation. You you know,
Speaker 1: had to know that, and or and or adults listening
Speaker 1: to this show don't. This is not an invitation to
Speaker 1: eat glitter and crams. I'm not your mom, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you what to do. But legally speaking, this is
Speaker 1: not an invitation to glitter and crams. Just oh, you know,
Speaker 1: some kid is gonna start pooping out some glitter and say,
Speaker 1: like I learned it from Creature feature. Listen, you did
Speaker 1: learn it here, but you also got a hefty dose
Speaker 1: of knowledge that you should not yet that you were warned.
Speaker 1: Although I mean not saying again not to say you
Speaker 1: should do this. I think it does kind of just
Speaker 1: pass through pretty harmlessly. I think you'd have to. I
Speaker 1: think you'd have to eat a lot of Like I
Speaker 1: could imagine if you ate like a lot of glitter,
Speaker 1: it could form an impaction. Ina. No, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you should. I'm just saying I wonder how much
Speaker 1: glitter it would take to create a medical crisis. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say probably like at least a cup, like on
Speaker 1: those tiny bodies, you know, if you're like five pounds,
Speaker 1: like a four or five year old eat a full
Speaker 1: cup of glitter, that, yeah, that's not good. New parents
Speaker 1: might need to step in, would be it would be
Speaker 1: a fun surgery though, right like you you kind of
Speaker 1: like get in there. It's like surprise glitter. But don't
Speaker 1: eat glitter, guys, unless you're a polar bear at the zoo,
Speaker 1: in which please do eat glitter because zookeepers need that
Speaker 1: to see if you're pregnant to eat what's being fed
Speaker 1: to you animals. Okay, those zookeepers take care. They love
Speaker 1: you and they just want you to be well. My
Speaker 1: dog eight I think a cupcake rapper once and it
Speaker 1: just came out on the other end like it was
Speaker 1: as if she was presenting to me her turd as
Speaker 1: a cupcake, like here you go, fresh from the butt.
Speaker 1: I sorry, I got gris out by fresh from the book.
Speaker 1: I got I got stopped immediately as like, and I
Speaker 1: just pictured dairy queen and it was a mess. It's
Speaker 1: thank you. I apologize for that image, but there it is.
Speaker 1: I can't take it back. Now. That was funny. Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: get back, I will be joined by Dr Rodrigo Medeen,
Speaker 1: who is a bat ecologist and known as the Batman
Speaker 1: of Mexico, and he has some very interesting bat facts
Speaker 1: as well as a story about glowing bat poops. The
Speaker 1: stay tuned for that. So I have the honor to
Speaker 1: interview someone who is known as the real life Batman
Speaker 1: of Mexico. He's a professor of ecology and conservation at
Speaker 1: the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Speaker 1: He has been tracking the migration of lesser long nose
Speaker 1: bats in order to help conserve the species and save
Speaker 1: them from endangerment. But in order to do so, he's
Speaker 1: employed an incredibly innovated method of tracking their movements, and
Speaker 1: it involves seemingly magical poop that glows. You can see
Speaker 1: him in action on PBS's Nature The Batman of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Dr Rodrigo Medine, Katie. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be
Speaker 1: talking to you today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: I am as excited as if I am meeting a superhero,
Speaker 1: the real life Batman. I love the work that you
Speaker 1: do with bats. I'm a big fan of bats. I'm
Speaker 1: sure most of my listeners are also big fans of bats.
Speaker 1: But often, just in general, they kind of lose out
Speaker 1: on the popularity contest when we're talking about animals, Like
Speaker 1: there are a lot of cute animals that everyone loves,
Speaker 1: a lot of larger species that are more gregarious, more popular,
Speaker 1: but baths kind of tend to lose out a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. So why are you so interested in bats?
Speaker 1: And was there a moment that you fell in love
Speaker 1: with bath. Well, yeah, I mean this is uh, this
Speaker 1: is a case of unfairly treated animals. We know that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of animals that have a negative public image,
Speaker 1: from snakes, two spiders, to scorpions, to charge the bats.
Speaker 1: None of those two more for your everyday well being
Speaker 1: than bats. Bats are connected to your everyday life, from
Speaker 1: whatever we eat, to whatever we wear in clothes, to
Speaker 1: whatever we drink. So uh, that started in a very
Speaker 1: early time in my life. When I was thirteen, the
Speaker 1: first bat came into my hands, and I really saw
Speaker 1: that this was the underdog, the real underdog, in which
Speaker 1: they take all of the things that people can think
Speaker 1: of and they apply them to baths. Bas have a
Speaker 1: false reputation of being the devil send voice, and to
Speaker 1: being filthy and to convey all kinds of diseases to us.
Speaker 1: None of that is true. So I've devoted my life
Speaker 1: since then to to learning about baths, digging about their
Speaker 1: natural history and showing the incredible services that they provide
Speaker 1: two ecosystems and to us, and then connect to people
Speaker 1: and explain to people that they really are good nocturnal friends.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned they're even connected to things like what
Speaker 1: we drink and what we eat. How are bo involved
Speaker 1: in that? Bats are the single most important best controllers
Speaker 1: of any agricultural crop, from corn to cotton, two chili peppers.
Speaker 1: Everything that you eat is connected to baths because bats
Speaker 1: consumed between ten and thirty percent of the best that
Speaker 1: are going to affect your crop. But that is that,
Speaker 1: that doesn't stop there. If you like drinking tea, if
Speaker 1: you like drinking coffee, bats are also the controllers of
Speaker 1: the of the most important pests of tea and coffee.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, what would I say as a Mexican you,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of my heritage, and we have tequila
Speaker 1: and mescal that are going through a boom all over
Speaker 1: the world. But we have them because bats are the
Speaker 1: key essential pollinators of a gas, the plant that is
Speaker 1: used to produce tequila and miska. Now, when people think
Speaker 1: about bats, I don't think they think pollinator. We usually
Speaker 1: think of bats as being maybe insectivores. A lot of
Speaker 1: people think of vampire bats the the really the only
Speaker 1: species that drink blood, but they're pretty popular in terms
Speaker 1: of our general culture. But we don't think of bats
Speaker 1: as being pollinators. We think of like bees or maybe
Speaker 1: even other insects, but that bat doesn't come to mind.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think a lot of people don't even
Speaker 1: realize that some bats have a role in pollination. So
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about that. What species
Speaker 1: of bats are pollinators and how how do they do
Speaker 1: this and how have they evolved to become pollinators? Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's an astounding number of species of baths
Speaker 1: in the world. Most people don't have an idea that
Speaker 1: there's more than fourteen hundred species of bats in the world.
Speaker 1: Three out of every four of those bats feed on insects.
Speaker 1: But then we have twelve percent of the bath that
Speaker 1: feed on nectar and pollen, ten percent of the bath
Speaker 1: that feed on fruits and dispersed the seeds of many
Speaker 1: many plants, mostly tropical plants. In fact, we've demonstrated that
Speaker 1: the tropical rainforests rely heavily on the bats dispersing their
Speaker 1: seeds a lot more than any bird. And then there's
Speaker 1: a few bats, maybe fifteen or so species that feed
Speaker 1: on the flesh of other vertebrates, including little birds and
Speaker 1: rodents and other bats. And out of the more than
Speaker 1: four species, there's only three that feed on blood. And
Speaker 1: because of these three, all the risk goes in uh,
Speaker 1: and people think, oh, no, that animal is going to
Speaker 1: suck about. Not absolutely not true, not true at all.
Speaker 1: That's what's always been both interesting a little frustrating to
Speaker 1: me is that there are so many species of bats,
Speaker 1: and most of them aren't blood drinkers. But we have
Speaker 1: just this one image of bats that people think of
Speaker 1: like little bats with dangerous little teeth that are gonna
Speaker 1: bite you, which isn't even true of most vampire bats.
Speaker 1: They are not even They don't even kill their prey,
Speaker 1: they don't suck them dry. They just lick at a
Speaker 1: little wound. They're they're pretty harmless to well, completely hard
Speaker 1: less of humans, really, But we don't have the sense
Speaker 1: then of how incredibly diverse bats are. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the lesser long nose
Speaker 1: bats because I think they defy the popular conception of
Speaker 1: what a bat looks like. I think they're adorable. I
Speaker 1: love how they look because they have this long muzzle,
Speaker 1: which makes them, in my mind, particularly cute. They have
Speaker 1: very cute little faces. But can you describe, like why
Speaker 1: do they have that long muzzle, which kind of goes
Speaker 1: against what you would think about would look like, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean the lesser long knows but and the Mexican
Speaker 1: long knows bats are two bats in the in the
Speaker 1: genus Leptononicities that are very very cute. That is the word, katie.
Speaker 1: They are cute, and I don't I don't use the
Speaker 1: word likely they will win over anybody who sees a
Speaker 1: lesser aloness, but are going to be immediately won over. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, most wild animals, regardless of it being an
Speaker 1: apostum or a raccoon or a snake or a bat,
Speaker 1: if you handle them, they are going to bite you.
Speaker 1: They're going to try to descend themselves, right. Well, not
Speaker 1: the case with a lesser loan. You handle them, and
Speaker 1: they're so sweet, they're so incredibly tame. They have such
Speaker 1: well good temper that you can handle them, of course
Speaker 1: with care, et cetera. But you can see that all
Speaker 1: the interest that it is going to their to their
Speaker 1: flowers and feeding on the neckar and being covered with pollen,
Speaker 1: that's what they want to do. So they do have
Speaker 1: there about an ounce less than an ounce of a
Speaker 1: bat um, so it's less than a foot from wind
Speaker 1: tip to wing tip, and then they have that long
Speaker 1: snout with a little what we call a nose leaf
Speaker 1: at the tip. That loan snout is needed support the
Speaker 1: very long tongue that they extend into the flowers that
Speaker 1: they visit. And then their tongue at the tip has
Speaker 1: a little bristle. Their popili have become little hairs, so
Speaker 1: they they scratched the end of the bottom of the
Speaker 1: of the flower to extract all of the neckar there,
Speaker 1: and they're very effective. Think of mopping the end of
Speaker 1: the flower. And they're mopping the flower like that, and
Speaker 1: and and and using the negtar. And agave is have
Speaker 1: actually learned to use bats for their for their benefit.
Speaker 1: In fact, i gaves have enslaved the bats to to
Speaker 1: to do the service that the gas need. Twelve million
Speaker 1: years ago they started go evolving. Now evolutionarily, agaves have
Speaker 1: learned that if they produce necktar that is a little
Speaker 1: below the concentration that the neat, the bats are going
Speaker 1: to come back and come back and come back and
Speaker 1: come back and come back. And the more they come back,
Speaker 1: the more pollen that they're going to take away. So
Speaker 1: it's actually the aga is feeding them very little so
Speaker 1: that they keep them trapped in slate and coming back
Speaker 1: all the time. It's like a slot machine for bats.
Speaker 1: Very addictive, exactly. I love that, and I love these pictures.
Speaker 1: I actually think one of the pictures I've used on
Speaker 1: the show before has been taken by you. It's these
Speaker 1: bats just completely covered in pollen. They look they look
Speaker 1: yellow because they've become so covered in pollen. But they've
Speaker 1: been essentially tricked, or maybe it's it is somewhat beneficial
Speaker 1: to the bats as well to get that nectar, but
Speaker 1: they have been tricked into doing the reproductive duties for
Speaker 1: the flowers. And you mentioned that that agavies have co
Speaker 1: evolved with bats. How dependent are the plants on the bats?
Speaker 1: Is how of have turned into slaves two bats? Because
Speaker 1: basically what of evolutionarily? Again, what they've done now is
Speaker 1: that their flowers open at night number one, and then
Speaker 1: the little answers the bags where the pollen is opened
Speaker 1: half an hour later. Then people people are gonna say
Speaker 1: when you hear when they hear your show, they're going
Speaker 1: to say, no, no, no, that's not true. I have
Speaker 1: seen bees and hummingbirds and all kinds of other things
Speaker 1: around the gaby flowers. Yes, they are there in the morning.
Speaker 1: Now the the gave pollen lives for about twelve hours,
Speaker 1: so they open at say seven pm. By seven or
Speaker 1: eight am, the pollen is dead. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: if a bee comes back, if humming bird comes back
Speaker 1: and discovered with pollens, a poll is dead and it's
Speaker 1: not going to pollinate the other flower. So it's only
Speaker 1: bats that can pollinate them. Uh. That has turned into
Speaker 1: a really key element in the biology of these two things,
Speaker 1: in that they co exist in space. Wherever you have
Speaker 1: a garbage, you have nectar baths, and where you have
Speaker 1: nectar baths, you have a gas. Always they're connected hand
Speaker 1: in hand and they really rely on each other. So
Speaker 1: if you take one out of the equation, the other
Speaker 1: one is really going to suffer. Right It is going
Speaker 1: to be a big, deep reaching effect. In fact, right
Speaker 1: now we're working with the tequila and the mescal producers
Speaker 1: to tell them that they need to allow a certain
Speaker 1: amount of a gaves to flower for the benefit of
Speaker 1: their own crop, for the benefit of the gaves. So
Speaker 1: we're producing bad friendly tequila and bad friendly mescal. Which
Speaker 1: these people are investing their own agave is because they
Speaker 1: have realized that without bats they're not going to have
Speaker 1: to killa for long Well, that's not good. So even
Speaker 1: if you don't like bats, but if you like tequila,
Speaker 1: you should care about the baths absolutely, although I can't
Speaker 1: imagine not liking these, especially the lesser long nose baths
Speaker 1: are so adorable. And you have been tracking the migration
Speaker 1: of the lesser long nose bats and the amount of
Speaker 1: distance that they travel. Why is it important to learn
Speaker 1: like the distances that they travel. Since bats are nocturnal
Speaker 1: and not like birds that you can see them during
Speaker 1: the day. You can even put GPS units that have
Speaker 1: little solar panels on them so that the batteries recharge
Speaker 1: and recharge and you shared and they continue to transmit.
Speaker 1: We cannot do that with the bats. So we know
Speaker 1: a lot less about the migration of these bats. We
Speaker 1: know that they migrate between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers from central southern Mexico to northern Mexico on the
Speaker 1: south of the US, but we don't know what are
Speaker 1: the stepping stone caves where they stop, and we need
Speaker 1: to make sure that those caves are also perfected. So
Speaker 1: we've been using all kinds of different tricks and trinkets
Speaker 1: and things to try to pursue these this information and
Speaker 1: these bats along their way. Well, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: tricks that you've used is making their poop glow, which
Speaker 1: I absolutely love. We love to talk about poop on
Speaker 1: this show because I like to destigmatize animal poop. I
Speaker 1: think that it can teach us a lot about evolutionary
Speaker 1: biology and if we can get past it like, oh, poop,
Speaker 1: well that's kind of gross, it's actually really fascinating. And
Speaker 1: I love what you've done in your research with bat poop.
Speaker 1: Can you describe why, why the glowing bat poop? What's
Speaker 1: going on there? Why have you done that? And how
Speaker 1: you know? I was with my students from not a
Speaker 1: Bar actually talking about how could we follow these baths
Speaker 1: on one night and one night only, trying to understand
Speaker 1: not necessarily in the context of their migration, but the
Speaker 1: actual movements during the night. Remember that these are all
Speaker 1: lap dating female females who have their babies in the cave, right. Well,
Speaker 1: we we thought of using ultra violet fluorescent powder. It's
Speaker 1: a really crazy thing, but we thought if we could
Speaker 1: sprinkle the emerging baths with ultra violet urescent powder and
Speaker 1: then capture them in the feeding grounds where the columnar
Speaker 1: cacti are that are expecting the path to come and
Speaker 1: show that they actually have that ultravolar fescent powder. We're
Speaker 1: going to show that these these baths for coming from
Speaker 1: this cave that are visiting those columnar cacti fifty kilometers away.
Speaker 1: And then my students were stationed there at the at
Speaker 1: the Sua field. They were capturing those bats and sprinkling
Speaker 1: them with a different color ultra violet florescent powder. So
Speaker 1: we were sprinkling and this is I'm sorry, my friends,
Speaker 1: I'm going to disappoint you. This is very high tech
Speaker 1: that is beyond any love in the world. And it's
Speaker 1: called kitchen calendars. We use kitchen calendars to sprinkle the
Speaker 1: emerging bats with yellow glowing fluorescent powder. And that was
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of bats that we were marking with that.
Speaker 1: And then my students have fifty kilometers away with the
Speaker 1: Colonna actor. They were capturing the bats and making sure
Speaker 1: that they indeed have yellow glowing powder, and yes they did,
Speaker 1: but we also needed the reverse We needed to show
Speaker 1: the reverse movement. So I told them to put the bats,
Speaker 1: the capture bats in a in a plastic bag, leaving
Speaker 1: the head out just the body and smear the entire
Speaker 1: body of the bat with blue glowing fluorescea powder and
Speaker 1: then release them. And then the next evening, once the
Speaker 1: bus are gone, I'm gonna go into the cave and
Speaker 1: check with my UV light to see there's any blue
Speaker 1: glowing poop, and Dad is going to give us the
Speaker 1: hint that, in fact, these bats are going I'm back
Speaker 1: and feeding while flying, and they're doing all of this
Speaker 1: with fuel that is composed of sugar water. How do
Speaker 1: they do it? Big open question? Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, so they're they're licking this powder off their
Speaker 1: bodies and then pooping it out. It's completely harmless to
Speaker 1: the bats, but then it gives you this very innovative
Speaker 1: way to track. You know, see, well, this individual bat
Speaker 1: that I know is gonna lick off this powder and
Speaker 1: then digest it and then have going poop, and then
Speaker 1: you can see where they've gone. It's really incredible. It's
Speaker 1: actually very pretty. I saw the video of the owing poop.
Speaker 1: It must feel like you're finding some kind of precious gemstone,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's bat poop exactly. That wasn't feeling.
Speaker 1: You should have seen me jumping up and down. When
Speaker 1: we finally found blue glowing book inside the cave, it
Speaker 1: was amazing, the biggest finding. Yeah, but that is that
Speaker 1: is so interesting, such an interesting finding because I have
Speaker 1: now I'm not a bad expert, but I have read
Speaker 1: about how the way that bats had to evolve to
Speaker 1: go from you know, they didn't start out as flying animals.
Speaker 1: They were mammals that did not fly, and then they
Speaker 1: had to evolve flights. So things like they're metabolism and
Speaker 1: immune system had to go through some very radical changes
Speaker 1: to allow the amount of energy that it takes for flights.
Speaker 1: So to see that in action that they can run
Speaker 1: on that, you know, just sugar water for so long,
Speaker 1: is really incredible. It's amazing. It's really we need to
Speaker 1: understand the physiology of these bats, because how can they bossing?
Speaker 1: They travel fifty kometers one way, hunt kilometers round trip,
Speaker 1: and and and then suckle their babies and all this
Speaker 1: is on sugar water. So this of course helped us
Speaker 1: understand that we can jack knife those fiftometers to one
Speaker 1: kilometers linear movements, which is going to happen, Well, that's
Speaker 1: what's going to happen when they migrating. They're going to
Speaker 1: at least jump from one step into stone cave to
Speaker 1: another one that is a hundred kilometers to the north,
Speaker 1: and then another hundred kilometers and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: That narrows down our search for these stepping stone caves
Speaker 1: and then protecting each and every one of those dates
Speaker 1: you mentioned this is important for conservation. So what are
Speaker 1: some of the threats that bats are facing now that
Speaker 1: are important for us as humans to really address? The
Speaker 1: main threat that is affecting the lesser known nons but
Speaker 1: and the Mexican long nons but is disturbance at the roost,
Speaker 1: intended and unintended, accidental or on purpose. People used to
Speaker 1: go to these caves and and disturb them with noise,
Speaker 1: with light, with movement. And you know that we were
Speaker 1: the ones. We were part of the group that enlisted
Speaker 1: this species in the Danger Species Act in the US
Speaker 1: and in the Mexican Federal List of Endangered Species in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties. And then we started working towards
Speaker 1: the recovery, which included a big environmental education program that
Speaker 1: helped win over the people who were living right next
Speaker 1: to the biggest caves into partners, into into bad defenders
Speaker 1: that turned into twenty years later into the recovery of
Speaker 1: the species, and we in Mexico delisted this species in
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteen, which is a good, big, good
Speaker 1: news that you know, the world needs good news in
Speaker 1: conservation and in many other items. And then the US
Speaker 1: delisted this species in two thousand and seventeen, so we're
Speaker 1: not talking about a recovered species out of our recovery plan.
Speaker 1: So we can do this, we can save many other
Speaker 1: species in the world. I love stories like that because
Speaker 1: I think often people get this sense that, oh, we're
Speaker 1: just we're all doomed because we've already screwed up the planet.
Speaker 1: We've already caused too many extinctions, there's no going back,
Speaker 1: And that's absolutely not true. There's so many things we
Speaker 1: can do. And I love the fact that you enlist
Speaker 1: people who are living near these habitats in order to
Speaker 1: help them actually preserve the species that they're neighbors with.
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting. You were telling me the
Speaker 1: story about how you discovered some baths in a zoo
Speaker 1: at local zoo where you would not expect to find
Speaker 1: them in the zoo. Let you go in and do
Speaker 1: some research on these baths. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that, but yes, we have in this lab.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of interest in nectar feeding bats.
Speaker 1: And there's a student of mine who's working at the zoo,
Speaker 1: at the National Zoo in Mexico City, and he told me.
Speaker 1: He texted me one day, well, there's there's all of
Speaker 1: three columnar catti with flowers right now. I said, why
Speaker 1: don't you set up a camera trap and see if
Speaker 1: there's any bats visiting. Next morning he showed me the
Speaker 1: pictures and yes, there's bats coming there that the cat
Speaker 1: i are in the enclosure of the brown hyena. So
Speaker 1: I had to talk to the to the director of
Speaker 1: the zoo. I said, do you think you can put
Speaker 1: your brown hyenas in the cage and then we can
Speaker 1: get into the enclosure and set up business and catch
Speaker 1: the bats there. And he did. Three days later we
Speaker 1: were there with our business, smelling like hyena all over
Speaker 1: the place. And then we set up the business and
Speaker 1: we got a bunch of nectar eating bats in the
Speaker 1: midst of Mexico City, in the center of one of
Speaker 1: the biggest urban centers in the world. How on earth
Speaker 1: are these bats finding these three columns in in the
Speaker 1: Mexico City Zoo. It's crazy. So now we have a
Speaker 1: whole program looking at how bats are using the botanical
Speaker 1: garden here the university as another zoo, by the airport,
Speaker 1: by the Mexico City Airport, Lots of light, lots of noise,
Speaker 1: lots of traffic, and the baths of air h I
Speaker 1: love that story because I think it is another testament
Speaker 1: to how much power we have in terms of we
Speaker 1: can help these species survive even amongst humans, with just
Speaker 1: three plants, just three flowers blooming in a zoo, and
Speaker 1: they will come and find it. I know that species
Speaker 1: are very fragile at times. With the same time, they
Speaker 1: can be very resilient, and it just requires a little
Speaker 1: bit of effort on our part to to help them out.
Speaker 1: So I love that just just making sure that we
Speaker 1: realize that we share the landscape with other species. I'm
Speaker 1: giving them their space. It's so important, so important, Katie, exactly, now,
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree. Before we go, I just want to
Speaker 1: close off by asking, you know, most of our listeners
Speaker 1: on the show I think are probably pretty big fans
Speaker 1: of bats. But as we mentioned before, I think bats
Speaker 1: get pretty rough treatment in popular culture and in the media,
Speaker 1: and people are often afraid or disgusted by them. They
Speaker 1: think that bats will like make a nest in their hair,
Speaker 1: which is a total myth. They think they'll bite you
Speaker 1: and suck your blood, which just doesn't really happen. I
Speaker 1: think one thing I'm concerned about is that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of news about zoonotic diseases, and unfortunately, bats are
Speaker 1: a vector of disease sometimes with when it comes to
Speaker 1: zoonotic diseases. Um, So I'm kind of worried that because
Speaker 1: of this, and because of the pandemic, is going to
Speaker 1: be a resurgence in the sphere of bath seeing them
Speaker 1: as dirty and as vermin. What would you say in
Speaker 1: terms of how do we mitigate that fear of bath? Sure, well,
Speaker 1: there's this is a very very important topic idea. I
Speaker 1: have to tell you that I have never worked harder
Speaker 1: to defend baths from attacks from everywhere than in the
Speaker 1: past year and a half, since the pandemic started. With
Speaker 1: the first declarations that this was a bad virus, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely not true. I started defending Bath left and
Speaker 1: right all over the world. Now we know that the
Speaker 1: that the virus that has us all in our homes,
Speaker 1: in our offices, it said that are not being able
Speaker 1: to interact with other human beings that we used to.
Speaker 1: It's a human virus, it's not a bad virus that
Speaker 1: that moved into a human being and then all human
Speaker 1: beings are infected. You can only get COVID nineteen from
Speaker 1: another human being. It's not true that if a bad
Speaker 1: fly is by, or if you have bats in your belfry,
Speaker 1: or if you visit a cave, you're going to be infected.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely not true. There is a species of
Speaker 1: virus that is closely related to this virus in some
Speaker 1: bats in China, but that doesn't mean that though that
Speaker 1: virus gave rise to this virus. That is as much
Speaker 1: as to say that since we share so much of
Speaker 1: our genetic information with chimps, chimps are rose from us
Speaker 1: and or we come from chimps. That's not true. We
Speaker 1: share a common ancestor. And that's the same case with
Speaker 1: the with the covid virus and the bad virus. They
Speaker 1: share a common ancestor, nobody knows how far, how long ago,
Speaker 1: But that is not true. That that that one of
Speaker 1: them comes from the other not true. And even furthermore,
Speaker 1: if some crazy scientists would take the bad virus and
Speaker 1: put it in a human body. That bad virus would
Speaker 1: not be able to in it does because it doesn't
Speaker 1: have the proper structure on its outside surface to to
Speaker 1: insert into ourselves. So that's not true at all. The
Speaker 1: real truth is that this is not come from baths.
Speaker 1: There are some other possibilities that maybe baths can give
Speaker 1: us some kind of of diseases, but it's the same
Speaker 1: case with rats and with songbirds outside your window, and
Speaker 1: even even with chickens. We know about avian influenza that
Speaker 1: is affecting human beings as well. So it's in our
Speaker 1: best interest to preserve ecosystems, to protect the rainforest, to
Speaker 1: save a species, and that is going to make it
Speaker 1: so that it's a lot less likely that we're going
Speaker 1: to get infected by any other zoonotic disease. The interests
Speaker 1: of conserving species, any interests of protecting humanity from zenotic diseases,
Speaker 1: are perfectly aligned because we just don't want to be
Speaker 1: over interacting with them to the point where we are,
Speaker 1: you know, constantly encroaching on their environment, and that will
Speaker 1: also reduce the chance of a zoonotic disease from from
Speaker 1: any animal. I think people have this sense that you know,
Speaker 1: we can only get zoonotic diseases from bats, but that's
Speaker 1: absolutely not true. We can. In fact, you know, farm
Speaker 1: animals are a huge concern because of their proximity to
Speaker 1: humans and their environments. So so yeah, no, I think
Speaker 1: that's really important. Yeah, And is there any any like
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to say about bats? Do
Speaker 1: you get people excited? Absolutely? Everyone can do something to
Speaker 1: hell the gossip bat. Number one, Please share this story.
Speaker 1: Please share the fact that you've heard today with your neighbors,
Speaker 1: in the all phase, with your friends, with your family.
Speaker 1: Just share that the knowledge that bats are so incredibly
Speaker 1: important for the functioning of ecosystems and for our own
Speaker 1: will be every day. Number two, if there are and
Speaker 1: there are, I know there are many bad conservation organizations
Speaker 1: in your area, considered donating, Consider getting in touch and
Speaker 1: volunteering and helping them along. They're having a hard time
Speaker 1: right now. And then number three, if you're really into baths,
Speaker 1: start learning, start reading, and why not put up a
Speaker 1: bad house outside your home, in the local park, on
Speaker 1: the tree, up on the side of the building, wherever
Speaker 1: you can put bad houses that are going to help.
Speaker 1: But enormously so please just think of how much we
Speaker 1: owe to baths. And the next time you have you
Speaker 1: enjoy a glass of tequila, raise your class, and your
Speaker 1: first sip of tequila is going to be to the
Speaker 1: health of bats. See the Health of baths wonderful. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us today. This is the
Speaker 1: Dr Rodrigo Medaine, who you can see on Nature's The
Speaker 1: Batman of Mexico. Thank you again so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you Katy