Bats

Bats have a bad reputation because of the ones that drink blood or spread disease, but these furry flying critters can be pretty cute! This week, we’re talking about everything from echolocation to weird potential uses for bat poop. Are there really bats with suction cups on their wings or is that just a cool toy idea? What is white nose syndrome and could vaping mushroom compounds… help? And what do you really think about Hank’s Dracula impression?

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out themes for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!

And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Poem]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-pitcher-plants-call-bats-get-their-poo-180956014/

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2010.1141

[Truth or Fail]

Bats that spend time on the ground:

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/03/vampire-bats-keep-out-trouble-running-study-shows

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16621953

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/creatura-blog/2018/01/why-fly-when-you-can-shuffle-the-lesser-short-tailed-bat-prefers-the-ground/

Diurnal bats:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/daytime-bats-help-explain-nocturnal-evolution/

https://blogs.plos.org/ecology/2017/06/29/bat-species-found-only-on-islands-in-trouble-worldwide/

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/mamm.ahead-of-print/mammalia-2017-0128/mammalia-2017-0128.xml

Suction cup bats:

https://www.wired.com/2010/04/how-sucker-winged-bats-hang-on/

[Fact Off]

Bat & dolphin echolocation:

https://evolutionnews.org/2012/05/tangling_the_tr/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/01/hear-bats-and-whales-share-sonar-protein

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)02073-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12511

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/refined-fine-tuned-placental-mammal-family-tree/

Moth echolocation blocker:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/07/moths-block-bats-sonar

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5938/325?keytype=ref&siteid=sci&ijkey=GbDjRlkoHfRnY

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2009/07/17/tiger-moths-jam-the-sonar-of-bats/

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/214/14/2416

[Ask the Science Couch]

White-nose syndrome:

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/bat_crisis_white-nose_syndrome/Q_and_A.html

https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/static-page/what-is-white-nose-syndrome

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-bats-could-bounce-back-devastating-white-nose-syndrome-180969378/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02441-z

https://www.mdpi.com/2309-608X/4/2/48

[Butt One More Thing]

Bat guano gunpowder:

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dkc09