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Bats

Bat expert Yvonne Morrin joins us to talk about those weird and scary-to-some nocturnal flying mammals. Rabies, bat fellatio, guano, bat bombs, histoplasmosis, white nose syndrome, and of course the sanguivorous vampire bat! Also: what to do if a bat attacks you.

Music: “Flip Flop and Fly” Joe Turner

Charity of the Week: Batworld (Located in Texas)
Bat rescue, rehab and education, and build new flight cages to get bats exercising before return to wild).
Also: www.dontshootbats.com

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18 Responses

  1. When I was a kid growing up on Guam they sold fruit bats in the supermarket.

    Toren almost brought the Guam fruit bat – Alzheimer/Parkinson – neurotoxin – cycad tree full circle to last episode: the cycad tree is a famine food in Okinawa.

    Yvonne was a great guest. I hope you can find another topic to get on her again.

  2. Aw, thank you Chew! I was so nervous – I mean – I was talking to THE GUYS! Every so often I would be listening to them joking with each other and forget that it was live and not on my ipod, and that I should actually say something! I’d better listen to it now (cringe).

  3. Hey Guys, Loving the site redesign. looks like it is going to be great. looks great on my phone too. I guess it’s time more me to donate 😉
    CJ

  5. I immediately looked up short-nosed fruit bat fellatio. The female performs fellatio on the male while he is mounting her from behind! I don’t know about the female bonobo ape but, holy crap!

  6. Hey guys, the histo problem from bats can also be delivered by birds and can, in rare cases, causes Macular Degeneration (blind spots caused by your retina bleeding). I know this because my wife is partially blind from histo. Oh, btw, she’s a photographer, so yeah, that’s fun.

  7. What a terrific topic. Yvonne is a fantastic guestpert! Sounds like she does physics as well, looking forward to her next appearance!? This was definitely a 10/10 episode.

  9. Great episode, with one very minor exception! The best compound German word is Landschildkoerte (land shield frog). I leave translation (or guesses at the translation) as an excercise for the reader.

  10. I really enjoyed this episode. Well done Yvonne, great work. I wish I had a particularly caustic area of expertise to offer, or any expertise at all actually… call me if you want a half-baked opinion on anything. ANYTHING.

    Anyhoo, here is a memory that I hope is a little relevant.

    When I briefly lived in Australia there was a mango tree in our garden that was full of fruit bats. In the evening the bats would fly under the house (which was elevated on stilts). Their urine and faeces stank but they were amazing creatures. I would be playing video games under the house and,as the sun was setting, they would depart en masse. We also had a blue-tongued lizard that used to sit silently and secretly under my chair and hiss at me if I moved too quickly.

    The house was one of the few remaining in Darwin from the time before Cyclone Tracy which destroyed 70% of the buildings in the area. A sort-of connection there to the Tornadoes episode, if only a personal one for me…

    Great job all of you, as always.

  11. Please please please don’t judge the Kenneth Oppel “Silverwing” trilogy on the cartoon!!! They’re awesome young adult books! Really worth the read! and a Canadian author. I loved them as much as Watership Down. The mythology angle is very similar. And you get to go to Bat Hell! How awesome is that? 🙂

  12. I just noticed your guest page addition to the new website. Awesome!!! I don’t know how you get your guests, but they rock!

  13. Heres one for your follow ups episode. On an Episode of ‘Stan Lee’s Superhumans’ they interviewed a guy described as a human bat.
    This blind man can allegedly navigate by using bat-like sonar clicks that he developed himself:

    Nice.

  14. the silverwing series is A+mazing. Cama Zots makes an appearance as the dark lord of the bat underworld.