Month of March 2022: Nature

This is an autobiography on the author’s life search and study of bats worldwide. I actually would give it 3.5 stars, better than average yet not a great read. Some parts were really exciting and adventurous and some parts were really bogged down with his descriptions of what exactly he had to do to get his photos of the bats. But, all in all, I learned a lot about bats…and his photos really are phenomenal.

I had no idea who Merlin Tuttle was. He’s pretty much one of the most notorious Chiropterologist in the U.S., and possibly the world. In 1986, he resigned as curator of mammals at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin, moved to Austin, Texas, where he founded Bat Conservation International (BCI) to help Austinites understand and appreciate the 1.5 million Brazilian free-tailed bats (a.k.a. Mexican free-tailed bats) that were starting to move into all the small 16 inch crevasses beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, just a few blocks down from the State Capitol. They were scared of bats, in general, because of rumors of rabies and attacks on people, and they wanted them exterminated!

But these bats, they would soon learn from Tuttle, were actually very gentle and too beneficial. Just one free-tailed bat can consume 20 to 40 moths a night. That may not seem like a lot, but when you factor in the fact that those 20 to 40 moths can each lay 500 to 1,000 eggs on Texas crops, times 20,000 moths, it changes your whole perspective. These insect-eating bats feed heavily on tons of a variety insects each night, such as corn earworms, tobacco budworms, and, the most costly to eradicate, fall army worm moths, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, etc…Thank God for his efforts! Today, it’s a tourist hot-spot, where hundreds of people will gather to watch their flight out at sunset, flying just above their heads. And never has one person ever been attacked or bitten.

These bats fly south for the winter and are only here from mid-march through September. They fly up to 10,000 feet above ground and can potentially form huge colonies, with 10-20 million or more bats. Up to 500 pups can fill up a single square foot.

Tuttle has invested his life to teaching others the importance of bats on our crops and economics all around the world, and has saved quite a few from becoming extinct. Some plants are strictly pollinated by bats, as their flowers only open at night, such as the agave cactus. We wouldn’t even have Tequila if it weren’t were bats. Fruit-bats are needed for seed dispersing certain plants and trees. And, of course, they are needed for insect and pest control. Bat guano can be used as fertilizer, but I’ve never seen it sold around here in southeast Texas. There are loads of bat caves all around Texas, especially up in the Hill Country (see link below).

I have not seen a bat around here in years…probably because our particular county, Orange County, prefers to shell out a few hundred thousand dollars each year to spray our skies, our ditches, our dogs, our farms, our people, and our gardens with poisons to take care of mosquito and bug problems. And it is usually done in the evenings, just when its finally cool enough for people to go out and tend their gardens. But, hey, it’s totally harmless…they say. But, I think I will still try and put out a few bat houses anyway, just to see if they are really around or not.

Tuttle’s adventures chasing down the more elusive bats are absolutely amazing and harrowing. He definitely has a great passion for bats. He has photographed all 46 bat species found in the U.S., and many in other countries. Some are found inside this book (See photos at the end of chapter 8 and at the end of chapter 12). If reading on a Kindle eBook, you can expand them to get a close up view. He has admitted to taking over 10,000 photos during bat expeditions just to capture that one GREAT shot for National Geographic…because that’s what it takes to get into National Geographic.

Chapter 4 on vampire bats was very interesting! The vampire bats are only down in Latin America for now, and about 130 miles south of the U.S. border. It is the only bat that has grown and become over abundant due to cattle raising and chicken farming where forests have disappeared. Not all, but some can carrie rabies that transfer to cattle, killing many cattle when there’s an outbreak. Still, according to Merlin, they are very gentle and harmless. The people had previously been burning ALL bats in any caves they found, trying to rid the vampire bat, but these turned out to be only fruit and insect-eating bats. The vampire bats hung out in very small numbers and deep inside the caves, separated, where no other bats were. So, they were never being killed. Merlin’s team, with Dr. Hugo Sancho, a local Veterinarian, helped educate the ranchers and farmers on the differences of the bats and how to best kill the vampire bat without harming any others. Interestingly, they use a poison mixture containing rat poison - WARFARIN, an anticoagulant!!… spread a little on top of the feeding bat, which feeds for 20 minutes on an animal. It then returns to the cave and the other bats lick it clean, killing that whole group of vampire bats.

LINKS TO ONLINE SOURCES

Here is a short, current and informative video regarding bats and disease presented by Merlin Tuttle, himself:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HjzzYo0OW-k&feature=youtu.be

Wiki link to more info and listen to the sound of the the Mexican or Brazilian free-tailed bat, the bats found here in southeast Texas.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_free-tailed_bat


It’s hard to believe this is the same fearless guy chasing bats in the book. Watch on YouTube, “The Worldwide Importance of Bats”, presented by Bats Conservation International (12:26):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4umck9gaxU

Link to places of interest for watching bat flights in the Texas Hill Country:

https://hillcountryportal.com/hillcountrybats.html ( )

The Secret Lives of Bats is very readable and compelling science book. The first chapters are about Tuttle's interest in exploring caves near his childhood home of Knoxville, Tennessee. Later chapters cover his rise as a bat researcher and conservationist in various locations around the world.

I really enjoyed each chapter and was reminded of a book my sister owned and I borrowed and read while in high school, called Animals Nobody Loves: The Fascinating Story of "Varmints" by Ronald Rood. Bats, like many animals such as spiders, wolves, snakes, etc...are animals that humans grow up learning about from hearsay, bad information or just plain mythology, handed down generation to generation, and, it seems, to be common to cultures worldwide. It is unfortunate, too, because, as Merlin Tuttle so aptly points out throughout the book, bats do a lot for the environment and even have a significant impact on control of deleterious insect pests.

Quibbles? One big one. I am pretty sure that Tuttle is an extremely competent scientist and he has had a long-term and important impact on conservation efforts of bat populations around the world. It seemed like almost every chapter, however, had some point where his efforts were near total disaster or he was at high risk of losing his life and I felt like he was trying to portray himself as the Indiana Jones of bat research. I am just saying, at times, the book felt overly dramatized.

Regardless, a good book of science, and I guarantee you will learn a lot about bats that you did not know by reading it. ( )

A thriller

This book teaches so much to anyone mildly curious about bats. And it's a rollicking adventure all over the world! I joined Bat Conservation International (BCI) as a result and want to do what it takes to care for these highly beneficial mammals. #lovebatsforever ( )

I'm not particularly interested in bats, but this is a great story. I learned so much about bats! Particularly about migration and hibernation, but also, e.g., about their important role in pollination and spreading seeds:

> In temperate zones, forests tend to be dominated by trees that produce small, dry seeds that simply fall to the ground or are scattered by wind. This works fine where summers are short and seed-eating insects don’t have time to produce large populations between winters. In tropical climates, however, very few such seeds escape long enough to germinate, probably explaining why most tropical plants have evolved alternate strategies to escape seed predators. In the Lamto area, Don had found that 80 to 95 percent of trees and shrubs hid their seeds in edible fruits… Rainforest birds avoid open areas, preferring the protection of trees. However, at night, without fear of hawk attacks, fruit-eating bats readily cross openings. Also, in order to eat twice their body weight, these bats have extremely rapid digestion and save energy by defecating in flight… Many bat-dispersed plants are especially well adapted to surviving harsh, dry conditions and thus are referred to as “pioneer plants.” Once established, such plants can provide food and shelter for birds who defecate mostly from perches…

I also learned a lot about how people have dreadfully persecuted bats. I hadn't nearly realized the extent of this. Tuttle mixes science in with anecdotes nicely. There is still less science than I would like, though, since he seems to have dedicated himself more and more to bat photography and bat conservation. The photos are excellent, and it is interesting to learn what went into them. Still, there are more photography stories than I needed, and they get a little repetitive in the second half of the book. The conservation stories are amazing, but often feel shallow—instead of giving us the full story, I think Tuttle deliberately skipped over the hard work involved, in order to make it more inspirational. There was also next to no discussion of white nose syndrome, or of the effects of climate change on bats. From a conservationist point of view, one might judge the book as milquetoast—but I was reading it for the science. ( )

I remember one time as a child playing lawn darts at dusk in my neighbors yard. I lost sight of the dart and then noticed that it seemed to be flying up, only to realize that it was actually a bat. My friend and I ran screaming indoors, not realizing that game we were playing was probably more dangerous than our neighborhood bats. Over time, I grew to admire bats partly for their contributions to a healthy ecosystem, but mostly for being marvelous creatures. In this wonderful memoir, Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International, details his lifelong love of the flying mammals and constantly running up against the fear and hatred of bats in his fellow humans. As a child, Tuttle crawled through local caves to tag migrating bats, his descriptions giving me vicarious claustrophobia. All through the book Tuttle extols the virtues of bats, from consuming tons of pestilent insects to spreading the seeds of plants, and even affecting the mating rituals of frogs. In addition to traveling the world to study bads, Tuttle taught himself how to photograph the animals, inventing tricks of the trade that would create compelling photographs published in National Geographic, or elsewhere. If you love bats, you'll love this book, and if you fear bats, well this book may change your mind. ( )