0:05

Hey,

0:05

I'm Jacob Pinner from the Overheard team. All

0:08

of June we're playing some of our very favorite

0:10

episodes. This one is

0:13

a skeptic's guide to loving bats, first

0:15

published in 2021. So

0:18

it's probably not a surprise that a bat researcher

0:21

spends a lot of time in caves. But

0:23

what is a surprise, at least to me, is

0:26

how much those caves reinvigorate Rodrigo

0:28

Medellin. It's the most amazing

0:31

feeling on earth. I always

0:34

use the opportunity to be in

0:38

a cave to reconnect

0:40

with myself.

0:42

They're like his own private portal to

0:44

some other world. When Rodrigo

0:46

goes into these caves, he's often with other

0:48

people, like students. But

0:50

he finds ways to have the cave all

0:52

to himself. Once we're done with the

0:56

work, et cetera, I send everyone

0:58

out of the cave and I remain

1:00

behind

1:02

just enjoying, just soaking in

1:04

the peace, the silence,

1:07

the tranquility in an

1:09

absolute dark

1:12

environment.

1:14

Now I myself don't go into caves.

1:16

I think they're pretty scary. Rodrigo

1:18

says when you turn off your flashlight,

1:21

the darkness in there is so profound,

1:24

it becomes beautiful in its own way.

1:26

It's like you're shrouded in

1:30

felt, in like a

1:34

beautiful, silky feeling

1:37

that just hugs you and welcomes

1:39

you to an amazing place in

1:41

which you

1:44

usually, as a human

1:46

being, you're not considering

1:49

as welcoming for you. In fact,

1:51

with nothing to see, your body puts your

1:53

other senses on high alert. Your

1:56

nose picks up the smell of bats, especially

1:58

their guano.

3:55

we

4:00

have here at NatGeo and follow them to

4:02

the edges of our big, weird, beautiful

4:04

world. This week, the

4:07

man on a mission to change how we see

4:09

bats. One product that relies

4:11

on bats is tequila. We'll

4:13

explain how Rodrigo convinced skeptical tequila

4:15

producers to team up with him and come on,

4:18

who wants to live in a world with no tequila? Plus,

4:21

why COVID-19 misinformation is putting

4:23

bats in danger and how Rodrigo is setting

4:26

the record straight.

4:27

More after this.

4:33

We're all built different, so we all

4:35

sleep different. But when you sleep on

4:37

a Sleep Number Smartbed, you're finally harnessing

4:40

your unique potential every night. Sleep

4:43

Number Smartbeds automatically respond to your movements

4:45

throughout the night to help keep you sleeping effortlessly

4:48

comfortable. Sleep next

4:50

level. Unlock your unique potential

4:52

with a Smartbed that can perform as well as you

4:54

do. And now, the Sleep Number

4:57

Queen C2 Smartbed is only $899. Save 200 bucks.

4:59

Plus, special

5:03

financing for a limited time. Only

5:05

at Sleep Number stores or sleepnumber.com.

5:08

See store for details. So,

5:13

I have to fess up that for the longest time,

5:16

my knowledge of bats started and

5:18

basically ended with Halloween. I

5:20

mean, bats are spooky, right? And

5:23

a story. I guess I assumed that

5:25

even studying bats was kind of a creepy

5:27

endeavor. It turns out, at

5:29

least according to Rodrigo Medellin, I

5:31

was totally wrong. I am a professor

5:34

of ecology at the National Autonomous University

5:36

of Mexico, and I'm

5:39

lucky enough to be one of

5:42

the happiest people I know. Today,

5:44

Rodrigo is a National Geographic explorer

5:47

at large. He's been studying bats

5:49

and evangelizing for them for decades. He's

5:52

even picked up the nickname, the Batman

5:54

of Mexico, which I guess is inevitable

5:56

if you study bats long enough. But

5:58

just like a comic book hero,

5:59

Rodrigo's journey started with a

6:02

mythical origin story. I

6:05

started with an interest on animals from

6:07

a very, very early age. I mean, my first

6:10

word was not mama or dada

6:13

or doodoo. My first word was flamingo.

6:15

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

6:17

flamingo? Flamingo, yeah.

6:19

I mean, I said, my

6:22

mom reflected it in my baby book,

6:24

saying, well, little Rodrigo said his first

6:27

word today, he was looking at a

6:29

book with pictures of animals and he was pointing

6:32

at a flamingo and he said ganglingo or

6:34

something like that. I mean, I got to say,

6:37

if I was, if my kid did

6:39

that, I would be very impressed. Don't get

6:41

me wrong. I think I'd also be a little bit

6:44

hurt that they didn't want to say my name

6:46

first. And

6:50

the thought would also cross your mind

6:52

that there's something really weird with your kid.

6:56

Sorry, but it is true. Now, little

6:58

Rodrigo would just inhale

6:59

books about wildlife, anything

7:02

he can get his hands on, but especially mammals.

7:05

So one day when he's 11 years old, he's

7:07

watching this Mexican game show, the 64,000

7:09

peso grand prize. Rodrigo

7:12

turns to his mom and says, you

7:15

know, if I could get on this show and they

7:17

asked me questions about mammals, I

7:19

think I could win. And my mom says,

7:21

no, no, no, you go play. You're 11

7:23

years old. You're not supposed to be know

7:27

it all about mammals. No, no, no, go

7:29

play. I insisted and insisted

7:31

and insisted and my mom finally took

7:33

me to the producers.

7:35

Now, to be clear, this was a game show for adults.

7:39

The producers completely dismissed Rodrigo.

7:42

They told him and his mom, look, this isn't some

7:44

kind of parlor game and we're just

7:46

not interested. So Rodrigo's mom

7:48

threw down the gauntlet. And my mom said,

7:51

well, ask the kid a question if you think

7:53

that he doesn't know. So they pulled a book

7:55

and they started asking questions about mammals.

7:58

nailed

8:00

the pop quiz. And soon enough,

8:03

they said, well, congratulations, because you're

8:05

going to be the first kid in the show. So how'd

8:07

it go? It went really well,

8:09

but no, I'm sorry to disappoint

8:12

you. I did not win the 64,000 peso prize.

8:17

I was going for 32,000 pesos,

8:20

and that is the question that I

8:22

did not answer. But my

8:24

God, did I ever win a prize?

8:27

Now, this was back in the days when there were only, like,

8:29

three TV channels and no Netflix.

8:32

So a ton of people were watching Rodrigo,

8:35

including the most influential mammal

8:37

researcher in Mexico, who was

8:39

apparently pretty impressed. He dialed

8:41

the TV station and asked for Rodrigo's phone number.

8:44

He called me home, and he

8:46

said, listen,

8:48

if you want to continue learning about

8:50

mammals, why don't you come over to

8:52

the University of Mexico, the Institute

8:54

of Biology, and we will take you to the field,

8:56

and we will show you mammals for real, so

8:59

that you can continue learning

9:01

about them. That's when Rodrigo started

9:03

using his superpowers for good.

9:06

Once he got hooked on bats, he realized they're

9:08

victims of a big misunderstanding. Bats

9:11

have a lot of things going for them, like the

9:13

fact that they fly and use echolocation,

9:16

or the fact that there's so many different species. And

9:19

then there are more practical benefits. Take

9:22

just one bat species as an example, the

9:24

Mexican freetailed bat. There

9:26

are tens of millions of them in Mexico alone,

9:29

and even more in the US, and they

9:31

love to eat insects. Each

9:33

million of those bats destroys 10

9:36

tons of insects every night. So just

9:38

imagine what would happen if we

9:40

lose those bats overnight. Well,

9:43

in a few months, we're not going to have any

9:45

crops, because the insects are

9:47

going to be accumulating, accumulating, and accumulating.

9:50

They're going to eat up all of our crops.

9:53

Rodrigo says corn,

9:54

cotton, coffee, they all

9:57

rely on bats to keep insect numbers down. Plus,

10:00

bats also spread seeds and pollinate

10:02

some flowering plants. So

10:04

a healthy bat population means fewer insects

10:07

and more fruit and flowers. Sounds

10:09

pretty good, right? Well, this

10:11

is where the misunderstanding comes in. Rodrigo

10:14

says you can trace our fear of bats

10:17

back to one moment a little more than 500 years

10:19

ago. It was when the Spanish conquistador,

10:21

Hernán Cortés, landed on the shores

10:24

of what's now Mexico.

10:26

And one of his scribes,

10:28

Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, notices

10:32

that the first night that they spent on

10:34

the coast of Mexico, he saw

10:37

these flying

10:39

little animals that come out at night

10:42

that land on the horses or

10:44

on the soldiers and bite them

10:46

to feed on their blood.

10:48

These were vampire bats. They're

10:50

native only to the Americas, so the Spaniards

10:53

had never seen them. And they do feed

10:55

on blood, not human blood, except

10:57

in extremely rare cases, mostly

10:59

cows.

11:01

But Rodrigo says

11:02

that was enough for our minds to start running.

11:05

And you know that blood is

11:08

a material that spikes

11:12

our imagination. You

11:14

know, an animal that is feeding on

11:17

that sacred liquid

11:20

is automatically enshrouded

11:25

in a sea of mystery, and

11:29

our imagination just takes off.

11:32

And then we start linking them with

11:35

processes that are really not true

11:38

at all. Even though just three species

11:40

of bats drink blood, and there

11:42

are well over a thousand species that don't, Cortés'

11:45

account made a connection in Western culture between

11:48

bats and bloodsucking. So

11:50

that was the first thing. The second

11:52

happened a few hundred years later, on the other side

11:55

of the Atlantic Ocean. An Irish lad

11:57

named Bram Stoker was cooking up the vampire

11:59

story that

13:59

is dinner for bats, especially

14:02

one species called the lesser long-nosed bat,

14:05

which love to eat agave nectar. They

14:07

attract the bats

14:10

to come and lick that

14:12

nectar and in the process be completely

14:15

covered with their pollen that

14:18

they are going to carry to the next agave,

14:21

to the next agave, and the next agave. But

14:23

that process that took millions of years

14:25

to perfect, humans threw it out of

14:28

whack.

14:28

As people began commercially farming agave

14:31

for tequila production, they started to cut

14:33

corners. They didn't want to wait years

14:36

for agave plants to flower naturally, so

14:38

they cloned agave plants. This was

14:40

cheaper and easier, but it came with a

14:42

cost. One night in the 1990s,

14:45

Rodrigo Medellin was hanging out with some other scientists.

14:48

And we were sipping tequila, what

14:51

else, right? And then

14:53

we started talking about how

14:56

there was a complete disconnect between

14:58

the tequila that we were sipping

15:01

and the bats that are responsible

15:04

for that tequila. In the 90s,

15:06

the lesser long-nosed bat was on the endangered species

15:09

list. And all of the agave cloning

15:11

was considered a factor because it takes away

15:13

the bat's food.

15:14

Plus, Rodrigo thought the cloning was also

15:17

bad for the tequila industry.

15:19

Natural reproduction creates genetic diversity,

15:22

but with clones, every single plant

15:24

shares the same DNA. One disease

15:26

that hits one plant, and all

15:29

of your plants are going to be sick because they're all the

15:31

same. They're

15:32

exactly the same. So

15:34

all it takes is for one disease to hit one plant,

15:36

and you'll be doomed. So Rodrigo

15:39

approached Mexico's Tequila Regulatory

15:41

Council. He proposed a plan that

15:43

he thought was a pretty good one.

15:45

He wanted to allow more natural agave

15:47

reproduction. He argued it would

15:49

be good for the bats and good for tequila.

15:52

So everybody wins. And

15:54

I showed them pictures, et cetera,

15:56

and they said, wow,

15:59

that's a fantastic... story. Thank

16:01

you very much for telling us." And I

16:03

suggested a number of meshes

16:06

there, and they said, well, thank you very much

16:08

for coming, Dr. Medellin.

16:09

That was fascinating.

16:12

Goodbye. That

16:14

was the end of it. Yeah, he

16:17

says they didn't really want to hear it. But

16:19

Rodrigo and some other scientists were getting

16:21

pretty concerned that a catastrophic blight

16:24

could wipe out Igaves.

16:26

So Rodrigo went back to the tequila council.

16:29

And they again said, wow, thank

16:31

you very much for coming. Fascinating

16:33

stuff. Bye. I

16:35

hope they at least gave you, like, a bottle

16:37

of tequila for the road for your trouble. Not

16:40

even. Not even.

16:42

And then it happened.

16:45

Rodrigo says around 2010 and 2011,

16:48

a disease slammed agave crops,

16:51

a double whammy of fungus and bacteria.

16:54

And just like he had warned, it was

16:56

the big one. And I swear, Jacob,

16:58

it was not me. I didn't put it in there.

17:01

It wasn't me, right? But

17:03

then they reach out

17:05

and they say, oh, my God, what was that idea

17:08

about the bachts and the flowers

17:10

and the pollen that you were saying? I said,

17:13

well, you're late, but let's see what

17:15

we can do.

17:17

Now that he finally had the ear of some tequila

17:19

producers, Rodrigo explained his plan. Farmers

17:22

would manage 95 percent of their crops

17:25

exactly the same as before. But

17:27

the last five percent would be set aside

17:29

for bats to pollinate naturally, which

17:31

gives the agaves more genetic diversity and

17:34

it gives the bats more food. And I explained

17:36

to them what they needed to do to allow

17:39

five percent of the agaves

17:41

to flower

17:42

and harvest the remaining 95 percent.

17:46

And that will be their safety

17:48

passage for the next generations

17:50

of agaves. And they immediately said,

17:53

wow, that makes all the sense in the world.

17:55

Why didn't we do this before? So

17:58

correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds

17:59

like your sales pitch

18:02

to the tequila producers is almost

18:05

like setting up a savings account. Like you

18:07

put this 5 percent aside, this

18:09

is agave that you can't, I

18:11

guess, make profit from now, but

18:14

it

18:15

keeps your long term success looking

18:17

better. Exactly. It's an insurance

18:20

policy.

18:24

In 2016, Rodrigo created a

18:26

pilot program that certified brands that

18:28

follow these rules.

18:30

Today, those labels have little logos

18:32

showing that they're officially bat friendly tequila.

18:35

Around the same time Rodrigo was starting the program,

18:38

the bat world got great news. Partly

18:41

because of Rodrigo's work, in 2015,

18:44

Mexico removed the lesser long nosed bat

18:46

from its endangered species list.

18:48

It was the first Mexican mammal ever

18:50

to make that kind of improvement.

18:52

So there were signs that bat conservation

18:55

was working. But

18:57

last year,

18:58

Rodrigo ran into his biggest challenge yet,

19:00

the coronavirus. Now,

19:03

I want to be really clear here. When

19:06

it comes to the origins of SARS-CoV-2,

19:08

which is the virus that causes COVID-19, there's

19:11

still a lot we just don't know. You

19:14

may remember that from the beginning of the pandemic,

19:16

bats have been blamed as a possible carrier of the virus.

19:19

And scientists are still investigating whether

19:21

bats were the source of the virus. Rodrigo

19:24

says it is true that bats

19:26

naturally carry some coronaviruses.

19:29

But there's many other groups of

19:31

mammals and even birds that

19:33

have other coronaviruses. So

19:36

you cannot say that bats

19:39

gave us COVID. So far,

19:41

nobody has pinpointed the exact source

19:43

of this coronavirus. And regardless,

19:46

you won't get COVID just from coming into contact

19:48

with a bat. But some misinformation

19:51

claimed bats could give people COVID. Even

19:54

though it was wrong,

19:55

that blame game has had real and devastating

19:57

effects on bats all over the world. In

20:00

Indonesia, the government killed hundreds

20:03

of bats, supposedly for public safety. In

20:06

Rwanda, government officials sprayed

20:08

bat colonies with a fire hose. And

20:10

Rodrigo, he followed it all. I

20:13

don't think I have ever worked harder

20:16

than in the past year and a half, trying

20:19

precisely to defuse

20:23

the unfounded

20:25

accusations against bats. And

20:27

of course, when you see that people are killing

20:30

bats because of some scientists

20:32

saying that bats gave us this,

20:35

it's not fair, Jacob.

20:38

So as far as what you and I can do,

20:40

Rodrigo says it's pretty simple. Be

20:44

a bat defender. You can go the

20:46

extra mile by putting up a bat house in your

20:48

yard. Or for starters, just

20:50

spread the word. Talk to your neighbor,

20:53

talk to your friends, talk to your family,

20:55

talk to the office people about

20:58

bats and about what you've learned

21:00

in this podcast.

21:02

Rodrigo says you can help out in your own area

21:04

too. Find out who's conserving bats

21:06

in your neighborhood. And maybe

21:08

even visit a bat cave.

21:10

You might just surprise yourself and like it more

21:12

than you think. It's

21:16

such a natural development.

21:18

It's such a natural process to

21:21

become at home,

21:23

at peace in a cave. Because

21:25

remember, Jacob, that we

21:28

as human beings, only 10,000 years

21:30

ago, only 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 years

21:33

ago, we were living in caves. So

21:38

caves are a natural home. And

21:40

what I'm doing is just going back

21:43

home. That's what I'm doing.

22:01

If you're ready to learn more about bats and

22:03

be a bat defender, well, we got

22:05

you covered. Check out more of Rodrigo's

22:08

work, including a short documentary that follows

22:10

Rodrigo as he looks for a rare species

22:13

of vampire bat inside an ancient Mayan

22:15

ruin. There's a link in our show notes.

22:18

And you can also find more facts and figures about

22:20

bats. I mean, there's so much variety.

22:23

On one end of the spectrum, there's the kitty's hog-nosed

22:26

bat, who weighs less than a penny. And

22:28

on the other, flying foxes have a

22:30

six-foot wingspan. Also,

22:33

we have a fun video breaking down how Dracula

22:35

created some of those damaging myths about bats.

22:38

And you can read more about why it's so tricky to nail

22:40

down the origins of COVID-19. Plus

22:44

for subscribers, journey into one of the

22:46

largest and wildest caves in the world,

22:48

in Borneo. It has caverns so

22:51

enormous that a jetliner could fit comfortably

22:53

inside. And it's home to millions

22:55

of bats. It's in the show notes

22:58

right there in your podcast app. Now

23:00

if you like what you hear and you want

23:01

to support more content like this, please

23:03

rate us and review us in your podcast app. And

23:06

consider a National Geographic subscription. That's

23:08

the best way to support Overheard. Go to natgeo.com

23:11

slash explore to subscribe.

23:19

Overheard at National Geographic is

23:21

produced by Ilana Strauss, Brian Gutierrez,

23:23

Marci Thompson, Bianca Martin, and

23:26

me, Jacob Penner. Laura Sim

23:28

also helped produce this one. Laura, best of

23:30

luck in your next adventure. Our

23:32

senior editor is Eli Chen. Our senior

23:34

producer is Carla Wills. Our executive

23:37

producer of audio is Devar Ardalan. Our

23:39

fact checkers are Robin Palmer and Julie Beer.

23:42

Our copy editor is Amy Kolzak. Hans

23:44

Dale Sue composed our theme music, and

23:46

he sound designed and engineered this episode. The

23:49

National Geographic Society is committed to

23:51

illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world

23:54

and funds the work of National Geographic Explorer

23:57

at large, Rodrigo Medellin.

23:59

is a production of National Geographic Partners.

24:02

Michael Tribble is the Vice President of Integrated

24:04

Storytelling. Nathan Lump is National

24:07

Geographic's Editor-in-Chief. And

24:09

I'm Jacob Penner. Thanks for listening. We'll

24:11

see you next time.