OF BATS, POOP AND RESEARCH: AN INTERVIEW!

OF BATS, POOP AND RESEARCH: AN INTERVIEW!

(in Eng?ish)

(Craving for more crazy interviews? Go here, here & here!)  

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:

- Man, please – PiPs says terrified - don’t tell ‘em I’m here, if I sign another autograph I’m going to loose my arm, and therefore my armpit, and thus my deodorant sponsorship thanks to which I can afford to pay the rent to live in this lousy blog… By the way, who are you? And most importantly, do you know what those things are, some sort of furry UFOs (or, as they’re called now, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) with an insane passion for cheap vintage tv-shows maybe?

- My name is Jason Preble, I’m a PhD student at the Kyoto University, and those are not things, they are bats, the only mammals capable of true flight [by the way you, dear human reader, are a mammal too, you know, just a reminder... Note of SM] . More precisely they are a couple of species of bats which ecology (N1) I’m studying: the Ryukyu tube-nosed bat and Yanbaru whiskered bat. They only live in the remaining forests of three islands at the far southwest end of Japan: Okinawa, Tokunoshima, and Amami-Oshima.

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)]

P- I see, I see… So, being from Japan, besides DC Comics they’re probably into manga too… Well I guess, then, it’ll be safer for me to choose a zombee costume for Halloween, as I don’t recall any comics or manga ‘bout zombees. Or maybe I should wear the tragic mask, only few know about, of Rusty, the Tap-dance shoe which becomes a drunkard (and eventually decides to end itself by buying a particularly keen on footwear St. Bernard puppy) after its dream of becoming a spy is broken because of its inborn inability to be noiseless…

Anyway Sir, why on Earth are you chasing them?

JP- These bats are considered endangered, meaning that

PiPs GOES ON VIDEO!

PiPs on vid (by sciencemug)

Here 
the video

(and also here)

Aaand this is what it says (in Eng?ish)

Hi guys! I am PiPs, the first post of my boss, here, sciencemug, the living blog and podcast whose motto is: “sip science & laugh!”. Me, and Bernard, the Camel, Don, WilliamWill Whatever and many other characters, posts, comics and episodes of sciencemug, well, we are full of spirit, comedy, nonsense, and fun, and we are born to share with you clear, accurate, beautiful science stories.

So guys, you are all invited at my boss place, the comfy url www.sciencemug.blogspot.com, and if you like it, well, please make a donation and help sciencemug to become a real pro in the great world of fun&science communication!

Thank you guys, have a great life! Ciao!

THE TALKING BIRDS AND THE RESEARCHER: AN INTERVIEW

 (in Eng?ish)

The interview opens with PiPs, on its way to the lunar-monthly appointment with its dermatologist (PiPs still can’t figure out how those damn armpits of its really work), passing by a chirping mayhem of birds that form a very long feathered line outside of, and fill the foyer up to the ceiling (literally, I mean, they’re birds, they can fly for [fill in with the deity of preference by the way Bacco seems a fun guy or Thunder pretty hard core it too] sake!) of the movie theatre “The fun’s beak” formerly known as “The high-flyer” (name dismissed ‘cause it made the theatre to be confused, on and on, with a Dutch coffee-shop for pilots) and before that as “The bald eagle’s wig” {name eventually dropped ‘cause it discouraged the other winged species which thought it was a filthy playground for adult narcissistic predators only and offended the eagles [notoriously among the touchiest creatures in the world along with dodos (which, science says, went extinct ‘cause they refused to feed unless a formal apology had came, and it obviously never did, from the ‘UNB’* for the fact that the other birds kept on mocking them for their look and inability to fly)] and all the ferns (no one really understood why)} while storming the sugar-coated worms/roasted bugs/not-popped corns/candy-seeds shops before the show begin**. And the film projected, hence the multitude, is: “Angry Birds: the movie! (In 3D)”.

PiPs and "The (Angry) Birds" (by sciencemug)

But PiPs sees also another thing in all that noisy chaos. It sees a human standing still among the tweeting animals. She’s a girl. In a lab coat (ok people, ok, the whole thing is absolutely cuckoo, but, as it has been remarked before, PiPs' reality is a very very, very peculiar place).

PiPs by SM

PiPs- I’m sorry to bother you miss, but, unless this is the weirdest creation of Madame Tussaud and you’re one of the most realistic wax sculptures I’ve ever seen, well, you’re alive. And human. So, may I ask who are you?

 

Miss MFV by SM

Miss Farias-Virgens - Hello! My name is Madza. I’m a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley. I work in one of the branches of Anthropology called Biological Anthropology [aka BioAnthro]. BioAnthro is dedicated to the study of human evolution and biological variation. But I’ve not always being a biological anthropologist, I started out my college level studies in the Biomedical Sciences, and later specialized in Medical Genetics during my Masters in Brazil (I’m Brazilian). I have made proteins wiggle and gotten lost among A T G C sequences [A, T, G, C are nucleobases, that is the four letters of the DNA’s alphabet. Ever wondered why Andrew Niccol entitled his movie “GATTACA”, well, “GATTACA”? SM's note] . Those were fun times, but I always thought of pursuing questions in Human Evolution, and the conclusive motivation came after reading pieces of Professor Terrence W. Deacon’s fantastic book "The Symbolic Species". Professor Deacon is now my PhD adviser and we work together in the BrainEvoLab. Professor Deacon and I are studying how the human language

THE ZOMBIE BEES AND THE RESEARCHER: AN INTERVIEW

(in Eng?ish)

The interview opens with a swarm of emaciated bees chasing PiPs in a web post-apocalyptic (and a bit 'eucalyptic' too, you know, just because of some munching koalas that have been put here and there to add an 'ooooooh -big dreamy anime like eyes- so cute' touch to downplay the whole horror zombie thing) scenario which is a mix of '28 days later', 'Mary Poppins' and 'Animal house' (shush, shush, don't ask, PiPs' reality is a very very, very peculiar place).

by sciencemug

 

PiPs- Those damn zombie bees! Now I bet we'll have also to face the zombie flowers, and the zombie honey, and then the zombie honey-moons the zombie moons the zombie Apollo 13s and eventually the zombie Kevin Bacons! Ghaaaahhhhh, a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon zombie world... Ghaaaahhhhh... Bloody dead flying things! We're so, so doomed... Ghaaaahhhhh! 
Bee of the swarm1- Bzzrains, bzzraaains, bzzraaaa... Hey, wait a min, if we’re looking for brains, why the hell are we chasing a brainless post of an idiotic blog? 

Bos2- Dude, if there were any logic in this mess you think we'd be screaming 'brains' instead of 'pollen' in the first place? 
Bos3- We can scream?

        PiPs_by SM        

PiPs keeps running around the internet till it sees a girl at the url of San Francisco State University

P- Hey! Hey, you, what are you doing there, take shelter, they're coming! Hey, I'm talking to you, who are you?

E.Bueno by SM

Researcher- My name is Erika Bueno and I’m a graduate student at San Francisco State University. My research focuses on solving the mystery of zombie bees [aka ZomBees]. I would like to figure out why infected honey bees behave so strangely when parasitized by a particular kind of fly! My main goal is to study the brains of ZomBees to understand what is causing them to behave strangely!

P- This is great! So you study the zombie bees (or 'ZomBees' as you call 'em), this means you certainly have the answers to my questions: what happens to these bees? What 'zombieizes' them? How? What are you doing to understand the 'how' part in detail? Why Battlestar Galactica ended in that crappy way? Do this last question make it clear to you that I don't know what I'm saying the 103% of the times?

EB- A tiny parasitic fly called the ‘zombie fly’ (scientific name: Apocephalus borealis) [PicA] turns bees into ZomBees! Female zombie flies use a needle-like organ, the ovipositor, [PicB] to inject their eggs inside the bees bodies [PicC]. The eggs then hatch and eat honey bees guts! Parasitized honey bees, the ZomBees, behave then very strangely at night. They fly out of their hive, land underneath lights and become disoriented before dying shortly after.
 

PIC A; PIC B; PIC C [CC pics; adapted by sciencemug (source: wikia.com)] (!)

Their zombie like behavior has led me to ask “what is causing this behavior?” And “are zombie flies controlling this behavior?” I’m answering these questions