(in Eng?ish)
The interview opens with PiPs dressed
like a Batman form the ‘70 clearly running away, with the spirited
eyes of a scared to death idiot character of a dumb blog, from
hundreds of wildly crazy-enthusiast super-cute bats hunting it for an
autograph, and from a raging mob of balloons of different sizes,
shapes and colors filled with “KA-POW!”, its little brother
“POW!”, ”SMOK!”, ”BAM!”, ”SWOOSH!”, the antsy "GASP!" and the terrible
unforgiving ”THWACK!” (which sounds a bit like a mix of Clint
Eastwood’s look after he finds out that the last spoon of his
favorite ice cream flavor has been kidnapped by a fake scout who in
reality is a middle aged short fella with the worst case of halitosis
in the recent history of medicine and who profoundly dislikes
Spaghetti Western and muscle cars with an Italian city in their
names, aaand Chewbecca “singing” a Skrillex track at the top of
its lungs) which - the mob - wants its six months overdue paycheck.
![]() |
The Batman logo on the "chest" of PiPs comes from a free photo by Henry & Co. and the bats come from a free photo by Rinck Content Studio; both pics are adapted by @sciencemug. Source of both pics: Unsplash |
Eventually PiPs manages to lose the balloons by distracting them with the cardboard cutout of a sexy Cat Woman chasing a spot of light, but not the bats, and, while hiding behind the url of the Wikipedia page of baobabs covered by a purple anti-biosonar cloak made in Jokerland, notices a man who follows the bats who, in turn, notices it:


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The black bat (on the left) is the Yanbaru whiskered bat, the brown bat (on the right) is the Ryukyu tube-nosed bat [Credits: original pics (one of each bat) by Jason Preble (adapted by @sciencemug)] |

Anyway
Sir, why on Earth are you
chasing them?

they are at risk of extinction, but very little is known about them. I have been catching, measuring, and tracking these bats for about two years to figure out how they live their lives and how best to conserve them and their habitat.

But,
in your case, why don’t you,
I dunno, just collect some
blood samples, or
some fur
to analyze,
like the CSI guys do with hairs to check if somebody is doping or
else, or, maybe you simply go to them, have a cup of tea and just
listen to what they have to say about life, eating insects, being
constantly harassed by Miss Garlic and Mr Woodenstake (well-known
bats stalkers), or whether sleeping upside-down make to wish them
“sweet-dreams” in fact something that provokes nightmares
instead?

![]() |
Same bats of before [Credits: original pics (one of each bat) by Jason Preble (adapted by @sciencemug)] |

[!] Incredibile dictu, but it turns out that it actually exists! See here!



Being
mostly small, nocturnal, fast, and fairly silent, people don’t
often notice bats, but they are very important members of our
ecosystem and they’re almost everywhere! Since they are often
associated with scary things like vampire imagery, they don’t get
as much love as they deserve, so thank you very much for your
interest!
The ‘Researcher Suggests’ corner:
![]() |
Jason Preble |
JP- If you are at all interested, please check out my crowdfunding page.
Unfortunately, there is very little known about the bats I study, so there aren’t many other resources I can recommend. However, you can read more about my research on the crowdfunding page, and I will keep updating it with more lab notes.
You
could also check out the IUCN [International
Union for Conservation of Nature
(N4)
Note of SM] Red List assessments
(N5)
for the Ryukyu tube-nosed bat and Yanbaru whiskered bat,
and our research group’s wesbite, the Island Bat Research Group.
I’ll
also put in some links for websites with some general bat information
and pretty pictures:
- Nat Geo article on bats
- Bat Conservation International
- Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation
NOTES of SM
(If something's wrong here, blame it on this dumb blog, not on the researcher)- Nat Geo article on bats
- Bat Conservation International
- Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation
NOTES of SM
N1- To understand what to study the ecology of an animal
species mean, dear reader, let’s see what ecology is: ecology is
the branch of biology that studies “the
relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their
physical environment; it seeks to understand the vital connections
between plants and animals and the world around them. Ecology also
provides information about the benefits of ecosystems and how we can
use Earth’s resources in ways that leave the environment healthy
for future generations.”
(ref)
N2- DNA metabarcoding is not (at least not yet...) a new dystopian way to check a customer out at the register of a supermarket, but it is a
method used by researchers to identify species. It “refers
to the automated identification of multiple species from a single
bulk sample containing entire organisms or from a single
environmental sample containing degraded DNA (soil, water, faeces,
etc.). It can be implemented for both modern and ancient
environmental samples.” (ref)
N3- In
the way living things are classified, the phylum is one “level” above the class, so a phylum can include several classes, but a class belongs to just one phylum. Given that, an arthropod (animal of the
Arthropoda phylum) stands to an insect (animal of the Insecta class)
as a chordate stands to a mammal. In other words a spider is an
arthropod, like an ant, but an ant is an insect, while a spider
isn’t. Similarly a shark is a chordate, like a dolphin, but a dolphin’s a mammal, while the shark isn’t.
And,
of course, luckily for y’all, a PiPs is (only) a PiPs.
N4-
ICNU is “a
membership Union
[created in 1948] uniquely
composed of both government and civil society organisations. It
provides public, private and non-governmental organisations with the
knowledge and tools that enable human progress, economic development
and nature conservation to take place together.” (ref)
N5-
The IUCN Red List “measures
the change of global diversity and acts to conserve that biodiversity
through assessments of individual species and identifying and
carrying out actions to address concerns. Species assessments
evaluate the chances of extinction in the foreseeable future based on
past and expected future trends. They help to prioritize where action
is most urgently needed and also to identify the major threats.” (ref)
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