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The Nature of Things Season 65 Episode 1
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FunTranscript
00:00Holy smokes!
00:26Oh!
00:30Look at all these guys.
00:32I'm in way over my head.
00:34Right in the heart.
00:35It's a Mayan site.
00:36That's amazing.
00:39I'm looking for bats under a 3,000-year-old city.
00:44Your lab is like...
00:46I mean, look at this.
00:48Like, this is amazing, right?
00:50It is pretty surreal.
00:51Like, we're literally trapping in between Mayan temples.
00:55Bats around the world are known to use a lot of archaeological sites.
01:00I'd never really thought much about bats.
01:03Until I heard about the weirdest, wildest science event ever
01:07in a remote part of Belize called Lamini.
01:10Thank you very much.
01:11Enjoy.
01:12I've heard that amazing research happens here.
01:16That bat science might lead to breakthroughs in everything from diabetes to anti-aging.
01:22And it's the chance of a lifetime to get up close and personal with one of the planet's most misunderstood animals.
01:30Lemon-eye!
01:40They call it Batathon.
01:43And it's unlike any other research project in the world.
01:47Two weeks a year, we turn an ecotourist lodge into a giant laboratory for studying bats in the field.
01:57We have somewhere between 70 and 80 bat scientists join us, coming from 20 different countries.
02:04So tonight, once we get about 15 bats or so throughout the nets, we'll start sending them over to the lab.
02:15Here we go.
02:16Bats make up an incredible one-fifth of all mammals.
02:22Just like a spaghetti.
02:23There we go.
02:24There are some 1,500 species worldwide.
02:27So if they're so common, why don't I know anything about them?
02:31Because bats will come at night.
02:34They're kind of mysterious.
02:35People don't really like them.
02:37But as you will see in a little bit, they're absolutely adorable.
02:41Oh, there's a bat!
02:42There is a bat?
02:43Oh!
02:45Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool!
02:49That's a golden bat.
02:51They eat lizards.
02:53And she's a particularly cute, Trinira.
02:56She's quite pregnant.
02:57You can see the bumps on her tummy.
03:00Yeah, so this is a vampire bat.
03:03Oh!
03:04So this is the southern yellow bat.
03:08The cool thing about them is that these species can be remarkably different from each other.
03:13So this is the Jamaican fruit-eating bat.
03:15Look at those teeth!
03:17You're gonna catch a bat, it's almost like going on a treasure hunt.
03:19It's one of the things that really drove me to really study bats.
03:27You got them?
03:28Got them.
03:29All right, come back out.
03:30Let's scan these guys that just came in.
03:32Scoot in.
03:33Okay, great.
03:34Perfect.
03:35All right.
03:36This is, I gotta say, the weirdest delivery service I have ever seen.
03:43And each one of these bags has a bat in it.
03:45Do you?
03:46You hold the bags and hands them to me.
03:47You trust me to do this?
03:48Well, no.
03:49Only one hand.
03:50Okay.
03:51And you're just gonna hand me one bag at a time.
03:53Oh, this is weird.
03:54Who else has held like 20 bats at once?
03:56You can never see this anywhere besides Batathon.
03:59So how long have you guys been working with bats?
04:02My rubber field boots, which are down here in the corner, are older than many of the students
04:07who are out in the forest catching bats.
04:09Nancy Simmons, an evolutionary biologist, is Batathon's boss.
04:14BZ number is 975.01.
04:18975.01.
04:19Yep.
04:20Correct.
04:21And Elizabeth Clare is a DNA detective.
04:26They log and ID every bat before handing them over to other scientists.
04:31CB24+.
04:33So we're checking these for passive transponders.
04:38They're little tags that would tell us if we've ever seen this bat before.
04:42These are the same tags that people use on their pets.
04:45It's the same technology.
04:47And if it, just like that, if it buzzes in my hand, it tells you this bat has a tiny tag
04:51under its skin.
04:52Any bats that don't buzz are sent to the porch for microchipping.
04:57Let's go through all those bags and ID them.
05:00Okay, mask.
05:01Mask up.
05:02When we are handling bats, we want to wear masks to protect them from any illnesses that
05:06we might have.
05:07Right.
05:08And to protect us from any illnesses they might have.
05:11These people cannot wait to claim their bats.
05:15Next bat.
05:16That's a little frigivore.
05:19And they're the cutest.
05:20So adorable.
05:21Aw.
05:22This little fruit bat is one of 45 species the researchers have found here.
05:26That's a big one.
05:28Everyone works as fast as they can to collect samples for their research.
05:35Blood, hair, saliva.
05:37So the bats can go back to the forest within four hours of capture.
05:41Look at that.
05:42Go, go, go.
05:43He loves a bit of sugar water.
05:45You're helping us help you.
05:47What makes it special, I think, is the camaraderie and collaboration that happens here working
05:54with live bats.
05:55There's nothing as great as being in the field, for me at least.
06:00Back to the back.
06:01Wow, wow, wow.
06:02Working with the live animals, seeing them, holding them, thinking about the research questions
06:07we have.
06:08How old is this bat?
06:09What does this bat eat?
06:10Who's it related to?
06:12How does it eat nothing but sugar and survive?
06:19I'm curious about how some bats are able to thrive on extreme sugar diets, and how can
06:29we learn from them?
06:31We got you.
06:34How do you stay healthy by living life to the extreme?
06:41Aw, awesome.
06:44They just consume their body weight in the sugar-rich floral nectar, and they are completely healthy.
06:50Oh, look at her go.
06:54And for any other mammal, including ourselves, it would make them sick.
06:58So I like to think of it as trying to eat your body weight in candy.
07:03So I'm trying to understand this, this resilience that they have, their ability to thrive on this
07:09extreme sugar load so that we can start to think about innovative approaches to our medicines
07:15that we use.
07:16So how can we better treat diabetes or obesity?
07:20Game-changing drugs like Ozempic were developed by studying lizards.
07:25So maybe bats will lead to the next big breakthrough.
07:32Just do a little quick check.
07:34Make sure it's not too tight.
07:35And let's see how we do.
07:40Is that lady flying a bat?
07:46One more minute, my tiny friend.
07:48And then you get to go home and tell all of your little bat friends about what a strange
07:52night you had.
07:53Hey, are you flying a bat right now?
07:55Um, yes I am.
07:56Okay.
07:57Why?
07:58How?
07:59Why?
08:00Well, how's probably the easiest.
08:02Um, it is a pole and a string.
08:10Why is because I am interested in looking at sugar metabolism during flight.
08:16So this bat just had a nice little snack and now it's using that snack to fly around me
08:22in circles.
08:24I keep getting distracted by you're flying a bat.
08:28What are you measuring about them?
08:29So I am trying to see how much of this recently ingested sugar meal they are using to fuel all
08:37of this exercise they're doing in the form of flight.
08:40How do you, what do you hope to do with that information?
08:43So this is going to actually let us expand the limits of what mammals are capable of during
08:51exercise.
08:52Really?
08:53So there's not really that much difference between a bat and a human.
08:57It's really the first step into learning more about them to help us learn more about us.
09:02That is awesome.
09:03Okay.
09:04Bringing him down.
09:05We're ready?
09:06He's done?
09:07For the first five minutes.
09:08Okay, cool.
09:09Nope.
09:10Shhh.
09:11Shhh.
09:12Then you go back in the container for 30 seconds.
09:18Lock that up.
09:20The bat exhales carbon dioxide and Jerica tests it to measure how much sugar is on its breath.
09:28This doesn't hurt them at all, right?
09:29It's just kind of like a hard workout?
09:31Yeah, it's like a hard workout.
09:33They get a sugar meal before, they get a sugar meal after.
09:36Right, okay.
09:37So you treat them.
09:38Yeah, we treat them well before and after.
09:40They're not probably the happiest because, I mean, I don't like going to the gym.
09:47But this amount of flight is well within their normal limits.
09:50We've caught these guys going like 60 miles an hour down the trails.
09:53Wow.
09:54Okay.
09:55And then how do you collect the CO2?
09:57So I put a syringe in here.
09:59Yeah.
10:00Then this valve has been stopping all this up.
10:03Open the valve.
10:04Take the sample.
10:06Put on the needle and inject into the tube.
10:13That is surprisingly simple.
10:15Back up.
10:16Yep.
10:17Oh, you're flying them again.
10:21So I'm also curious about you.
10:22Do you get dizzy or symptoms of this?
10:24Oh, absolutely.
10:25I get very dizzy and nauseous with this experiment.
10:28Because, like, I can do five, seven bats in a night.
10:32Could you apply what you learned to, you know, human illnesses, things like diabetes?
10:37Yeah, that's the overall goal.
10:39I think it's going to take a couple of decades before it goes from me flying a bat on a string
10:45to curing diabetes.
10:49But I'm happy to be the first step.
10:51That is so fun.
10:53This is just the weirdest night ever.
10:55I love this research.
11:01Okie doke.
11:02Okay, so I'm hoping you can show me a couple of different bat species and I can learn how to identify them myself.
11:07This is one of the ones that's really hard to miss.
11:10Okay, so it's called trachops.
11:12The common name for this is the fringed-lipped bat.
11:14Yeah.
11:15Because he's got all these little rumps on his chin.
11:17But more common than that, people tend to refer to it as a frog-eating bat.
11:21Because this is notorious, these gigantic ears, he can hear the frogs.
11:25So that one's pretty easy.
11:27But the way this gets complicated is...
11:31Let's look at this one.
11:32So, I can tell right away by looking at it, this beautiful bat with stripes on its face.
11:37Right.
11:38That this is a Dermoneura.
11:39But the problem is that to tell what species it is, I have to look inside its mouth behind its back molar.
11:47And we're talking about a tooth that's smaller than a grain of sand.
11:51So how many people have this weird skill that you have?
11:54You can look into the tiny molar in the back of its tiny mouth and identify it.
11:59Well, actually, in this group, a lot of people can do this now.
12:01A few years ago, no one could.
12:03The number of bats that get ID'd, studied, and released during Batathon is more than a thousand.
12:10I feel like almost any biological question or evolutionary question you want to ask about mammals, bats are a great model.
12:20Like, how have some bats evolved to live more than 40 years and stay healthy their whole lives?
12:27They not only live for a really long time, they also live really well for that time.
12:32Karen Sears recently made an astonishing discovery about aging in female bats.
12:38Female bats, in a lot of groups, actually maintain their fertility until really, really old ages, which for them is a really, really old age.
12:47Studying tissue samples collected at Batathon revealed that bats' ovaries function perfectly into old age, unlike those of humans or other mammals.
12:59So, as I like to think about it, bats that are essentially the equivalent to an 85-year-old human are still having babies.
13:06It's the normal thing for them to do. They're all doing it. All the while, while looking like they're 25 years old.
13:12So bats have figured out a way to live forever, stay young, and live that dream.
13:18These findings were really a holy shit moment for us.
13:22Jasmine is hoping her sugar research leads to a similar kind of moment.
13:27I do this really simple test, the glucose tolerance test.
13:31Essentially, you get a dose of sugar, and then at different time points later, you see what happens to that sugar in your blood.
13:40She extracts a tiny drop of blood from the bat's wing before and after feeding, and measures its blood glucose levels.
13:48How your blood sugar is changing over time is a readout for how well your body can handle that sugar.
13:57Jasmine found that nectar and fruit-eating bats are genetically adapted to stay healthy, even with four times the blood glucose level of someone with diabetes.
14:07Baby.
14:08And the bat can go back to the jungle after a nice little treat.
14:13So I like to think that the bats are really happy with the experiments that we get to do together.
14:20Because they'll get some sugar, which they love.
14:28Jerika's bat has finished his workout.
14:32There you go.
14:35This is his reward. It also makes sure he has lots of energy to get home.
14:39So this is honey water.
14:41So this is going to be very yummy for a little friend.
14:45Gets him hydrated. Gives him lots of energy.
14:48There we go. Is that good?
14:53Okay.
14:54You can go now.
14:57There we go.
15:00Goodbye.
15:02Wow. Look at this.
15:22Welcome. This is the high temple.
15:25The high temple.
15:26You're looking at basically the third highest temple built by the Mayas in Belize.
15:31Laminae was a major city in the Maya world.
15:35Continuously occupied for 3,000 years until the Europeans arrived.
15:40I see little cracks in the facade of the building, too.
15:44I imagine those are little nooks and crannies that bats might be able to squeeze into.
15:48Yeah. For example, I've seen birds nesting in there.
15:50And in some, bats will go in there as well.
15:52Do we know if bats were important to the Mayans who built these structures?
15:59The Mayas were definitely looking at them as something unique, something that are of importance, you know?
16:05Pollinating. Even back then, they knew if bats are round, they can harvest things.
16:09Bat scientists know the Maya had it exactly right.
16:13So there's many plants that have evolved to be pollinated by bats.
16:28If you remove the bats from that ecosystem, the plants couldn't reproduce anymore.
16:34Bats eat tons of insects every night.
16:37If you remove bats from an ecosystem, the insect populations would explode because bats perform, basically, pest control.
16:45That's critical for the forest as a whole and for agriculture.
16:49You've probably heard that bats use echolocation, bouncing sound waves to hunt their prey.
17:02Batathon scientists discovered that some moths emit sounds that can actually jam bat signals.
17:08Not to be outdone, bats have developed a stealth ability to sneak up and silently catch them anyways.
17:22If we took bats out of an ecosystem, it would have cascading effects across the whole ecosystem.
17:29Tonight, I'm heading farther afield with Glazel and Nina, PhD students from York University.
17:37Glazel grew up in Belize. She is the country's first bat scientist.
17:43It's great to have Ranger Melvin with us, since we're heading into the remote jungle.
18:00We're deep in the Maya forest, one of Latin America's great wild places.
18:08Glazel studies what bats eat, how flexible their diets are, and how well they adapt, especially as their jungle habitat disappears.
18:18There's spider monkeys up there and they don't seem happy that we're here.
18:23This will definitely be our backup net because we don't really want to stress them out too much.
18:28These are squeakers, they will protest the entire time too.
18:49The leaf-nosed bats, you can see the nose is shaped like a leaf.
18:53It's always pleasant to catch them because they're very cute.
18:56Oh, we got a bat.
18:58Oh yeah, we do.
18:59This is one of my target species.
19:02The common name is Little Yellow Shoulder Bat because the males will have these yellow shoulder patches here.
19:12Now we just wait for them to poop.
19:14You use the bat poop to figure out what their diets are?
19:27Mm-hmm.
19:29There's poop, thanks to the little yellow shoulder bat.
19:34So we extract the DNA from the feces, from the poop, and that DNA contains every single thing that they've eaten.
19:41And so we can compare that with a reference library that has the DNA of all these different plants like in a library.
19:48What?
19:49So we compare what we got from the poop to what is in the reference library and it will tell us exactly what they've eaten.
19:55All that from their poop.
19:56Yeah.
19:57You're sifting through poop for DNA.
19:58Exactly.
19:59Checking the Rolodex.
20:00Yeah.
20:01Can I come in?
20:03Yes.
20:04You have to lift our door.
20:05Great.
20:06Oh, thank you.
20:08This is a little der minura, which is about smaller than a chicken.
20:12Oh, look at him!
20:13Look at him!
20:14Oh, you got a mosquito there.
20:16Thanks.
20:17He's a very little one.
20:18I always thought that bats would eat things like that, mosquitoes, but this guy eats only fruit?
20:23This one is a fruit.
20:24Well, that's what I'm trying to find out, if they only eat fruit or if they can diversify their diet,
20:30either by choice or because of necessity.
20:32We need to really understand how at risk they are if we remove the resources they eat.
20:41So we don't want to re-catch this bat because it's quite a stressful process for the bat.
20:46So we put some really bright nail polish on its back toes so that if we catch this bat again in the net, we can release it right away.
20:55Oh, that's really clever.
20:56Okay.
20:57Do you want to do the honors of painting this?
20:58I wouldn't mind.
20:59Okay.
21:00Okay, yeah.
21:01So just lightly paint the toenails.
21:02I'll do my hair so I'll check my nails.
21:06Oh, I'm opening my own salon.
21:08Suddenly we get a critter alert from Nina, just outside the tent.
21:13I saw a snake go off into this area.
21:17Belize has some pretty poisonous snakes, so.
21:20I would say we should move our station away.
21:23Yeah.
21:24Yeah.
21:25Because it will be very hard to keep track of the snake once it's in all of that brush.
21:29So the best thing for us to do right now would be to move our entire processing station, maybe process out the back of the truck now.
21:36Nothing gets in the way of bat research.
21:40Oh, this one's huge.
21:43This is the Jamaican fruit eating bat.
21:45His teeth look a lot bigger and he seems to be showing them to you.
21:52They have a very strong bite.
21:54This is the one we really want to wear the leather gloves for.
21:57I am not forgetting this night anytime soon.
22:04We've faced tonight spiders, snakes, a lot of kind of nerve-wracking stuff.
22:10Is it all worth it to you?
22:12I'm from Belize, so this is my home country.
22:16I grew up near all of this nature and it's a part of me.
22:22I asked Glazel why this research matters to her.
22:26So at daybreak she took me to the edge of the forest to explain.
22:30Every year we come back there's more and more land cleared.
22:33Like this patch of land was forest just last year.
22:36This was all forest?
22:37It was all forest at one point, just recently.
22:41The jungle is disappearing, replaced by large-scale agriculture.
22:47What is clearing all of this jungle do to the bats?
22:51So it's destroying a lot of roosting habitat and feeding habitat for sure.
22:55We're trying to see how adaptable and resilient they are because every organism has its limits.
23:02That's why back at Batathon, there's work to do.
23:11And I'm all in. I'm helping pitch a flight tent.
23:24Andrea? Do we want to try to attach ropes to the top point?
23:30Andrea Remmel and her mentor Sharon Swartz are going to photograph bats in flight after dark with super high-speed cameras.
23:38You guys study biomechanics, right?
23:40We do.
23:41Like the way that bats move as they're flying through the air.
23:44Exactly.
23:45Okay, so where are the cameras going?
23:46We'll mount the cameras around the space on tripods.
23:50And then we'll point them into the space so that we're capturing some volume.
23:55We want to get kind of a 3D view of what the bats are doing so that we can reconstruct their movements later after we take the video.
24:02That's the way we can get insight into exactly how wing shape relates to what a bat can do.
24:09How form fits function, we find out right here.
24:12Exactly.
24:13Very cool.
24:16I cannot wait to see the flight tent in action.
24:20But first, I want to meet Brock Fenton, bat expert extraordinaire.
24:28Oh, good to see you.
24:29Hey, Brock.
24:30Glad you made it.
24:31How are you?
24:32I'm fine, and you?
24:33I'm doing well, thanks, yeah.
24:34Oh, man, I am excited to get to talk to you.
24:36This guy is the OG batathon guy.
24:38Like, he started the thing.
24:40This is your book of bats.
24:42Yeah.
24:43And you are, like, a legend in this field because you are the person who started batathon.
24:48Yeah.
24:49I don't flim myself into holes in the ground like I used to, but I still have a hell of a good time working with bats.
24:57Brock has devoted his retirement to photographing bats here in Belize and around the world.
25:04Oh, that's a perfect shot.
25:06Yeah.
25:07That vampire bat, who was probably just shot here.
25:09Look at that big smile.
25:11Teeth at the front there.
25:12Yeah.
25:13Okay, yeah.
25:14So these are the front teeth here that he makes the bite with.
25:18Right.
25:19When you think about the legacy of batathon, the impact that it's had, how many different scientists have come through you, how do you feel about it all?
25:28I mean, I'm not saying I'm responsible for what they've done, but I may have given them a chance to do something that they wouldn't have otherwise done.
25:38Okay.
25:39Lamanai is surrounded by farms owned by Mennonite families.
25:43One family is nice enough to let Caleb and Hugh from the University of Waterloo onto their farm to monitor bats in a cave.
25:51It's probably out here.
25:52The moment of truth.
25:53Yep.
25:54Hold it for you.
25:55Oh, yeah.
25:56Awesome.
25:57High five.
25:58Yes.
25:59Yes.
26:00We got it.
26:03We have something in the range of 80 to 100 bats that are marked here with RFID tags or pit tags, and we've got an antenna set up at the entrance of the cave just here beside us.
26:14Caleb already activated the antenna during his last trip to Belize a few months ago, and when you're in Canada, you have no way to check on things.
26:23And so we just showed up, and we're seeing that it's worked, and so that's awesome.
26:27The work is paying off.
26:28Means there's data.
26:29All right.
26:30Let's take a look.
26:31Look at that.
26:32That's awesome.
26:33Right up to today.
26:34Right up to today.
26:35Let's see what's here.
26:364th, 17th of April.
26:37Let's see still see there's a bunch of different bats.
26:39The data reveal several species live in this cave, including vampire bats.
26:46Vampire bats are so amazing.
26:47They're the bats that run on the ground.
26:49They drink blood, and they get all filled up, and they make long-term friendships, and they're so spectacular.
26:56I love them.
26:58A lot of people think vampire bats are kind of creepy because they feed on the blood of mammals, including livestock.
27:06In Latin America, farmers treat them as pests.
27:10But Jacob and his family have come around after spending time with Caleb at the bat cave.
27:17Every time I'm here, they check in to see which bats are still here and how the bats are doing, and I think, in general, they're just, like, happy to have them around.
27:24Oh, no.
27:25Okay.
27:26It's okay?
27:27Yes.
27:28There you go.
27:29Perfect.
27:30I think maybe putting the harp trap, like, right here or here, so that way when they eventually escape, they escape into a trap.
27:36We're going to try to really stitch the cave together so the bats have no opportunity besides to fly into our nets if they want to leave the cave tonight.
27:43We're going to make sure we put stuff on the ground here and put stuff on the sides.
27:46Try to stitch everything right together so the bats just can't really have anywhere else to go.
27:50Otherwise, the vampire bats will crawl on the ground and run out through the holes and jump and fly away.
27:55So, they're really smart, so we're going to outsmart them tonight.
27:58Hey, guys.
27:59How's it going?
28:00How are you?
28:01Really well.
28:02Good.
28:03Just got a vampire bat right to the face.
28:04You got hit in the face?
28:05Yeah, so this is a vampire bat.
28:06Wow.
28:07Dude, this is awesome.
28:08Yeah.
28:09See how he's checking it out?
28:10Okay.
28:11He's not that scared.
28:12He's not that scared.
28:13He's looking to see who you are.
28:14So calm.
28:15They're cute.
28:16Amazing, hey?
28:17Yeah, they're pretty cute.
28:18See how flat the nose is?
28:19Because they're not that scared.
28:20He's looking to see who you are.
28:21So calm.
28:22They're cute.
28:23Amazing, hey?
28:24See how flat the nose is?
28:25Because they're not biting, right?
28:26They're actually putting their face, right down and slicing, and that's how they make the
28:51It's actually more for slicing than for biting.
28:53So these are like little razors.
28:55They're super, super, super sharp, like scalpels.
28:57You said there's multiple species in there?
28:59We have records of seven species in this cave.
29:02Why are you guys on that side of the screen?
29:07So as soon as they hit the net, we try to almost like catch them with the net
29:10and then just grab them out really quickly.
29:11All right, okay.
29:13Just like that.
29:15I know there's a culture at that time, really.
29:18Shh, shh, shh.
29:23Oh my god.
29:24You're really awesome.
29:27So what kind of a bat is this?
29:31That's a bat.
29:34That's a golden bat.
29:36They eat lizards.
29:38The big nose leaf and the huge ears.
29:40They're just perfect hunters.
29:48Just up the trail, Hugh gathers details about each bat they catch.
30:03Hey guys.
30:04Can I sit in if I mask up?
30:06For sure.
30:07Okay.
30:08Zero, four, two, four.
30:11We're just processing the bat that we caught a few minutes ago.
30:21That's a vampire bat.
30:22Oh, cool.
30:23And so we got like a year's worth of data on them now.
30:25And so it's going to be really cool to be able to understand and shed light on the individuality of the animal.
30:31And hopefully, in the end, some of this information can help us conserve them.
30:36Adult, female, non-reproductive species, tag.
30:42All right. Bye, buddy.
30:44Thanks for hanging out with us.
30:49So which bats are hardest to catch, would you say?
30:52Vampire bats are the hardest to catch.
30:54They're just so smart and they just figure it out really quickly.
30:58And they can run.
30:59They can run?
31:00Yes.
31:01They're the only bats they can.
31:02So there's somebody here I can talk to about this?
31:03Yes.
31:04I can see footage of bats running?
31:06Yes, on a treadmill.
31:07I'm so excited.
31:11I wanted to see some of them vampire moves.
31:13Hey there.
31:14Uh, Dr. Ken, Dr. Welch.
31:16So I tracked down Ken Welch at the University of Toronto.
31:20I was in the field last night and I met these people that said that there are videos of bats running
31:26and I had to go to the source and find out like what this is all about.
31:29Ken was at Batathon last year, running vampires on a treadmill.
31:34What's your day job like?
31:36Well, I'm generally interested in how animals move and in particular what they use to fuel bat movement and exercise.
31:45This video is one of my favorites.
31:48It is just something we noticed the bats doing randomly when we were trying to work with them.
31:52They do this really cool sideways walk.
31:55This is amazing.
31:58We think what they're doing with that sideways motion is maybe circling around their prey animal.
32:05So these guys land on the ground and they sneak up.
32:08So moving around side to side is, yes, sizing up their target.
32:12Like what's the safest way to come up and nip the foot and lap up some blood but not get stomped to death by a huge cow.
32:19Wow, so these guys are little ninjas.
32:22That's amazing.
32:25Batathon scientists have even recorded bats swimming.
32:28Did you know they could do that?
32:30From how they move to how they age, it's like bats have superpowers.
32:42What we are finding in the research is that not only do bats have a really long lifespan, they also have a really long health span.
32:49That means that most bats as they age, they don't get cancer, they don't get inflammatory diseases like arthritis, they don't get heart disease.
32:58They don't show that same physiological deterioration that we see in humans.
33:03One of the key things we have to do to study aging bats is actually look in their tissues to see how aging is or is not happening.
33:11Karen collects tissue samples in Belize and analyzes them in her lab at UCLA.
33:17We would love to know what allows bats to live that long so that we could use it as a cheat sheet for humans and figure out how we might be able to make ourselves live longer.
33:27One avenue that my lab has been investigating with this whole bats living forever thing is DNA and the integrity of the DNA.
33:35And what we're finding is that unlike mice, humans, other animals we've looked at, the DNA of the bats stays pretty intact even as they get older.
33:46So it doesn't get a lot of damage to it.
33:49This makes me want to see bats in their home environment.
33:52So I'm tagging along with Elizabeth to another archeological site.
33:56You're actually walking over a building.
34:00So this is a Mayan building underneath this dirt and trees.
34:07So where I'm taking you now is actually into a tunnel that has been cut into this Mayan ruin.
34:17And the bats have begun using it again.
34:19So they're using it like a cave.
34:21We're going to go in one at a time.
34:23And if we're lucky, the bats are going to be at the back of the cave.
34:27Put on your hard hat and mask up because we want to protect the bats from anything we might bring in there.
34:35Oh wow.
34:51This is snug.
34:53I'm trying not to hit the roof.
35:00Oh, they're here again.
35:14Oh my god.
35:24There are so many of them.
35:27It's like these guys have made a whole community.
35:30This is a colony of natalus bats.
35:32They're funnel-eared bats.
35:35And they're well-known insectivores.
35:38They've got really, really long, thin legs.
35:40And they're thought to make them really, really good at catching things like spiders.
35:48Elizabeth is a highly respected DNA detective.
35:51She tracks bats and other creatures when humans aren't around using tools you wouldn't expect.
35:57So this is a very small fan, which acts like a vacuum, and filters air.
36:08And then I have pre-cleaned filters.
36:15And that's actually going to capture any material in the air.
36:19The bat detector is ready for action.
36:22And so as they move back and forth through the air,
36:25they're going to shed little tiny bits of themselves.
36:28Dead skin cells, hair follicles.
36:30We call this environmental DNA.
36:32And when they leave that behind in the air,
36:35what we're going to do is basically filter it through this device.
36:39So you've left a sampler running inside of the air.
36:42What happens next?
36:43Well, we leave it running for about eight hours.
36:45And then we're going to go in and we're going to collect that little filter paper off the top.
36:48And then we're going to amplify and sequence a little tiny, tiny fragment of DNA,
36:53which can tell us the different species of bat.
36:56And so we're going to do that over and over again,
36:59and build up a picture of how this particular tunnel was used,
37:02and which species came and went while we were sampling them.
37:05So it's kind of like a security camera that figures out who's been in and out.
37:08Yeah, exactly.
37:09And so we get to know what they're doing when we're not there to disturb them.
37:12This groundbreaking work with environmental DNA can be applied on a much larger scale
37:18to monitor biodiversity all over the world.
37:21This is absolutely brilliant.
37:33There's action in the flight tent.
37:35Is there a bat in there already?
37:37There's a bat in there already.
37:38Sharon is holding the bat.
37:40And what we're going to do is release the bat.
37:43Right in front of those cameras?
37:44Right in front of the cameras.
37:45The cameras are high-speed cameras.
37:46You really want to be able to slow down the movements of the bats,
37:49which are normally faster than the eye can see.
37:51We need our team members inside the tent to tell us when they're releasing the bat,
37:55and to tell us when the bat has flown, and then we'll trigger from out here.
37:59Are you guys ready inside?
38:00We're ready.
38:01Okay.
38:02They're going to yell, trigger.
38:03So wait to trigger until they tell us to.
38:06One, two, three.
38:09Trigger.
38:10Nice, you got it.
38:11There it is.
38:12That looks really good.
38:13Before you release the bat, I saw that you guys were doing something with the bat, right?
38:16What were you doing in there?
38:17We were putting white dots on the bat.
38:18It's really hard to know when you're looking at the video sometimes, whether you're looking
38:19at, like, an elbow or a foot or a knee.
38:20And so we put white dots on the parts of the body that we care about.
38:22We really want to characterize how that wing shape is changing during flight.
38:23Right.
38:24So it sounds like the team inside is ready to fly another bat.
38:25Do you want to go in and help them out?
38:26Yes, can I?
38:27Okay.
38:28Can you close that zipper?
38:29Sure.
38:30We don't want the bat to leave this flight vent.
38:31This is Mr. Artivius Luteratis, the greater fruit-eating bat.
38:33And this is one of the larger bats that we have here.
38:34This is Mr. Artivius Luteratis, the greater fruit-eating bat, and this is one of the larger
39:01bats that we have here.
39:03I'm going to pull the wing out so you can see the fingers.
39:06Right.
39:07It's a dot, dot, dot, dot.
39:08One on the elbow there?
39:10Or is that the shoulder?
39:11No, that's the elbow.
39:12You're exactly right.
39:13Elbow, okay.
39:14This is a great mammal hand.
39:15You know, this animal has almost every joint in its wing that you have in your hand.
39:20That's what makes them such incredible flyers.
39:25So, trigger team, are you guys ready to go for another flight?
39:30I'm ready out here.
39:31Okay.
39:32Okay.
39:33So, this is a pretty chompy bat.
39:35It's got really big teeth and powerful jaws.
39:38Three, two, one.
39:43Trigger?
39:44Oh.
39:45Well done.
39:46Did I say it right?
39:47You said it.
39:48I just said something.
39:49Did we get anything?
39:50Let's see.
39:51We're going to review.
39:52This is my first time as a bat scientist.
39:53That's beautiful.
39:54It was?
39:55Hooray!
39:56Sharon has studied bat wings for 35 years, revealing how their flight evolved separately from birds.
40:03Bird wings are stiff and feathered.
40:05Bat wings are flexible membranes stretched over long jointed arm and hand bones with tiny muscles throughout.
40:13This lets bats constantly reshape their wings for aerobatic maneuvers.
40:19It might also explain why they hang upside down to rest.
40:24I mean, what would you do if your arms, legs, and butt were all connected by a giant oversized wing?
40:30Well, so it turns out that being tall is a real advantage when you're trying to catch that?
40:35Oh, so I'm catching him, too.
40:36Okay.
40:37I don't want to hurt him.
40:38Yeah, I think if you just try to get him in the middle of the net, try not to bonk him on the head.
40:43Okay, here we go.
40:44Three, two, one.
40:46Wow.
40:47Got him.
40:48Wow.
40:49Oh!
40:50So we'll bring him back to exactly the area where he was netted, so that he'll be really close to his
40:59home roost.
41:00Mmm.
41:01Okay, right.
41:02He'll be someplace that he knows really well.
41:06Great job!
41:12If there was a message that you guys could send out to the world about why they maybe could love bats as much as you guys do, what would it be?
41:21People like whales and dolphins, and those are weird slithing things that live in the sea.
41:25And all of the things we like about whales and dolphins is that they have families, they live for a long time, they're really intelligent.
41:31Those are all things that we know about bats, and as we learn more about bats, we find that they're more and more like whales and dolphins.
41:37And us.
41:38And us.
41:39And us.
41:40They're more like us than I think most animals are.
41:42And us.
41:43And us.
41:44And us.
41:45My week at Batathon has, ahem, flown by.
41:49Time for one last glimpse of my new furry friends.
41:54And to say goodbye to an awesome group of scientists.
41:59Thanks.
42:00Everybody say, lamb and eye!
42:01Lamb and eye.
42:02You don't have to say that.
42:03That's what that is.
42:04It's been great having you here.
42:09Well, thank you.
42:10It's been fun teaching you about the bats.
42:12I've really enjoyed learning about this.
42:13I feel like I've got a couple names down.
42:15There's, um, Artibius Intermedius.
42:17Yes.
42:18There's, um, Glosophagus.
42:21Glosophaga.
42:22Glosineterbat.
42:23There's Desdemona is a character from Shakespeare.
42:26Desmodus.
42:27The vampire bat.
42:28Right.
42:29Okay, so I just...
42:30It's pretty good when you've just learned these names recently.
42:32Okay, so I...
42:33What was the most interesting thing you learned here?
42:35Ah, man.
42:36Oh.
42:37That's tough.
42:38You know, 1,500 species is massive.
42:40I thought there were, like, seven.
42:41Yeah.
42:42So that's a big surprise for me.
42:43And, um, and, you know, they're so unique, but there's such a range.
42:46You know, some are really cute and adorable and tiny, like the fruit bats.
42:49Yeah.
42:50And some are, um, more unique, facially.
42:52I think that's what gets me coming back all the time.
42:54Because they're, they're all bats, but they're also so different.
42:57I would say that the biggest thing I learned was that a lot of people are kind of afraid of them.
43:01They're kind of nervous about them.
43:03But once you get up close to them, like, and you see their little hearts beating and you see that they're little...
43:07The fur and the eyes that they watch you.
43:09Yeah.
43:10Like, they're...
43:11It's so much easier to empathize and connect with them than I thought.
43:13Just getting...
43:14I didn't expect how getting that close to them would affect me.
43:16It was...
43:17It was really lovely.
43:18Yeah.
43:19Batty.
43:20Say Batty!
43:21Batty!
43:22Awesome.
43:23Bat.
43:24Well, thank you guys again from the bottom of my heart.
43:25It's been great.
43:26You guys have been awesome Bat Ambassadors.
43:28It's been a blast.
43:30There's a lot of fun.
43:31They're all gone.
43:32Boatığın makes them feel really good.
43:33This is a diner.
43:34I'm excited.
43:35I'm excited.
43:36I'm excited.
43:37I'm excited.
43:38I'm excited and I'm excited.
43:39I'm excited.
43:40I'm excited.
43:41I'm excited.
43:42I'm excited, why are you?
43:43Are you excited?
43:44Good good.
43:45All right.
43:46And I'm excited.
43:47I'm excited.
43:48This is a complete load.
43:49I'm sassy in the air.
43:51I'm excited.
43:52I'm excited to go.
43:53I'm excited.
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