← New Books Network
New Books Network
Yossi Yovel, "The Genius Bat: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
01:04:13
Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to the New Books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread Podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers, and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the Proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.
- [00:51]
1-800-Contacts Advertiser
Close your eyes, exhale, Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [01:19]
Yossi Yovel
1-800-Contacts.
- [01:23]
Microsoft Copilot Advertiser
Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows. Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com copilot.
- [01:52]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:57]
Gregory McNeff
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Gregory McNeff and I'm excited to be joined by Yossi Yovel, the author of the Genius the Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal which was published in October of 2025 by St. Martin's Press here in the United States. Yossi is a professor in the Department of Zoology since 2011 at, I believe, Tel Aviv University. He did his undergrad in physics and biology also at Tel Aviv. He received a Master's in neurobiology from Tel Aviv and a PhD in biology from Tubing University in Germany. I believe he also has time at the University of Chicago. So, very impressive background. Why I selected this book should be pretty obvious, but it does a wonderful job of distilling decades of cutting edge cognitive and behavioral research. And as we get into the conversation, you'll hear Yosi talk about the individuals who he's worked with and whose shoulders he's standing on. And it takes this research and really puts together a beautiful narrative of how we've come to understand bats. And he describes in a way that they're not something to be afraid of or biological curiosities, but a model for how animal intelligence develops. Like I said, absolutely fascinating book. Yossi, thank you for joining me today to discuss your book.
- [03:18]
Yossi Yovel
Thank you. Very looking forward to the discussion.
- [03:21]
Gregory McNeff
Yossi, why did you write the genius bat and who is the target audience?
- [03:26]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, good question. I mean, I love writing. I must say, as much as I like doing science, I think being a scientist is an extreme privilege. It's one of the best jobs you can have. But I also really like writing about science. I write quite a lot to several. There's several journals where I write. I like science communication. I think it's important. And I think, if I may, I think I know how to tell a story. So I think that's maybe why I wrote it. I mean, I actually wrote it for myself. Probably many people say that, but I honestly did not know if it will ever be published. And, you know, I played around with it and then I said, okay, let's send it and see if somebody wants it. Regarding the audience, I think that's. That's actually a. More. I think my answer here will be a little bit more surprising, maybe. So I don't think it's a book for people who necessarily love animals or bats. Okay. I think it does provide a lot of information about bats and how remarkable they are. But I think nonetheless, it's a book about science if you want to understand how science is done. I think I really put an emphasis on that, even for myself. When I researched the history of bat science. I was more interested in the history of the scientists than in the bats. I know the bats already. And I think it's also a book about people to some extent. I mean, these are scientists. They're the heroes of the book. But there's a lot of personal things. How do they become scientists? How? There are a lot of intrigues, a lot of personal life, maybe scientific politics. So I think it's also, it's not, it's not a novel, of course, it's a science book. But, but there's a lot of behind the scenes, as I, as I like to call it.
- [05:13]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah, no, I think before we start the interview, I was really impressed with the quality of the research you did on the researchers. And you make a great point. I do feel like your book sort of peels the layer back or opens the curtain on the scientific method. You know, it's not as, what's the word I'm looking for? Structured, organized, clean, as we think. I mean there's some pretty heated debates that you talk about in the book. There's personalities. I think at one point when you're talking about the Frankfurt school, there's falling outs and everything. I mean, at the end of the day, scientists are human, yet we have this process and you articulate it very well in the book that shows how we do progress and come to a conclusion. So that is a great point. I want to dive right in here. You, I believe in the opening chapter you talk about vampire bats and what's so unique about them. And here I'm referencing reciprocal altruism and cheating. Could you maybe describe what's unique about a vampire bat?
- [06:14]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, I think I, you know, I think humans, we, we are always fascinated by the sociality of other animals. And I think that's why I opened with this chapter, even though, you know, I'm an expert on bat echolocation. And we'll talk about this later. And there are many chapters that talk about the, the history of the research and bats abilities to use sound. But I think most humans, they want, they always ask me when I give lectures, you know, so are bats monogamous? Do they have leaders? Those are always the questions that people are curious about. And yeah, vampires are maybe one of the most remarkable examples for sociality in mammals in general. Even I would say, you know, the famous, as you know, because you've read the book, there's a very famous story of reciprocal altruism. So vampires, of course, they feed on blood. First of all, we should say there are only three species of vampire bats in Central America. The amount of blood that they eat is minute. So it's not something that will kill you or anything like that. So you really don't have to be afraid of them. And for them, finding food is super important. If they don't find food, meaning blood, within 48 hours, they might even die or a little bit longer than that. And thus they evolved this Remarkable social trait, maybe I should say that, where they donate blood. So if I identify that you're another vampire for my colony and you have not fed today, and they have probably ways to do that, I will offer you blood if I have found it. So I can regurgitate some of my food and feed you, basically. And what Jerry Carter and Jerry Wilkerson and others who've all been interviewed for the book, what they found is that it's not as if related individuals donate blood to each other. And this is what we would expect, right, based on evolution. We help our genes, we help family members, but here they actually found that it's more of a pact, you can say, of a long term pact. So I will assist you today and maybe you will assist me in months or years. These animals can live for many, many years. And it's really one of the first and best described examples for such a reciprocal altruism. And of course we're fascinated by stories about altruism, right, Because I mean, we humans often help non kin and there's a big question of whether this exists in nature in general and why and what would be the reason. And I think in this case it seems that it's one of the systems that we understand. You asked about cheating. Maybe I'll just say a word about that. So of course the problem with these systems is the appearance of cheaters. I can take advantage of the system, get food from you and not pay back. And what Jerry Carter suggests, and he's also studying this right now, is that it's a system that really, how will I say it, it does not allow cheaters to exist, to coexist. So if I will cheat everyone all the time, eventually I will be left without friends and I will get no food donations. So it's a system that is resilient, kind of, I would say resilient for cheating because it's long term, because it's reciprocal. You maybe can cheat once or twice, but it's not something, it's not a strategy you can maintain for longer, a long time.
- [09:42]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah. What's fascinating is I think Jerry Carter is still trying to create a cheater vampire. What exactly would that be and how would he go about it? And I want to quote you something in your book. One way to create a cheater vampire is to starve her before every encounter so that she has no food to give. But Carter is not convinced that this would work. Vampires social sentences are very acute and he suspects that partners would immediately notice that she is starved and so is not to blame. I mean, that's a very intelligent and empathetic insight. And I. I absolutely want to get into the intelligence of bats. But how would we create a cheater vampire if they're that. That intelligent? How would we circle?
- [10:24]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, so. So you. First of all, I think that's a very. It's maybe one of the most important sentences in the book. So I, you know, chapeau for noticing, I think. Yeah, exactly. I think. Jerry's dream. So Jerry is a researcher, a colleague, and he's working on these bats, and it's his story, basically. And his dream is what we just said about cheating. He wants to test that. And the best way to do that would be to indeed, somehow to generate a cheating bat and see how it loses its friends, for example. That's the hypothesis that we think is what will happen. And. Yeah, I mean, you've read it. So as a scientist, I could come up with the idea. And indeed, a lot of the book is about how you come up with ideas. Right. So one idea would be, okay, if I deprive this animal from food, then it has to cheat. Right. Because it can never pay back. But. And, you know, I could come up with this idea, or a student could, or somebody. But Jerry says, and I think he's right, that these bats are, you know, they're very, very sensitive. We don't know exactly how, but they know if you're really cheating or if you really don't have food, if you're really hungry, starving. So this would not work. So how would he create a cheating bed? I think that's still an open question, but I think that just gives us an example of, A, how we think about questions and what are the challenges, and also B, showing us that a lot of things are still open, a lot of questions are still open. Some people think that everything's kind of solved right. When you do science for many years. But actually, there are many, many open questions.
- [11:58]
Gregory McNeff
No, absolutely. And I want to go into one of the key researchers right now, Jack Bradbury, in the context of why bats are social animals. So could you, A, talk about Bradbury's contribution and B, why do bats live in groups or, you know, basically congregate as social animals?
- [12:16]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah. So first of all, as you said, I should say, there are nearly 1500 species of bats, and many of them are very social, some are not. So we can't say all bats are social. And even if you look at sociality, there are many, many different levels there. There are harems, a male with several Females, they're colonies with millions of individuals, but not necessarily interacting with each other too much, or let's say not coordinatedly interacting with each other. They do interact, of course. And you even have bats. And you have bats that are part of a group that exhibit what we call fission fusion. So Maybe there are 60 bats in the group, but sometimes they will all sleep together, sometimes they divide into multiple groups. So it's very, very diverse. And indeed Bradbury and others, that's one of the big questions in social biology in general. What determines your social structure with humans? People still argue whether we were originally monogamous or not. And are we more similar to chimps or to bonobos and so on? Yeah, but I think the most important contribution of Jack Brad, really to the field, although there are many, and he's one of the first to work on bad sociality, is the finding of lacking. So lacking behavior is a behavior where males aggregate and display. They can be singing or showing some kind of visual display, dancing or something like that. And this is in order to attract females. And there's a big question why they do this. I always give the example of a market where you have all of, especially at least Middle Eastern markets, which I'm familiar with, you will have all of the meat stands one next to the other and all of the vegetable stands one next to the other. And you're asking yourself why? I mean, it doesn't make sense, right? But one of the explanations is that this attracts everybody who wants vegetables has to go into this alley of the market. So it attracts all of the consumers, the females, in the case of the lek, and it allows them to select more carefully. So when you see everything in front of you, you maybe can pay attention to fine details and select more carefully the right male or the right tomato. And in the case of the lek, what Jack Bradbury found is that hammerheaded bats. So these are bats where the males have this humongous head that looks like a hammer. And it's all about their, their courtship songs or vocalizations. They, their vocalization sounds. Sound like honking. Actually, I've never seen this. I've only read about it and I. And heard it, but I've never, never seen it with my, like in reality, something I still want to do. It's, it's something you can only watch and see in tropical areas in Africa. And he was the first, I think, to, to arrive at one of these leks and to, to describe these bats. So they, they aggregate along the river and they will all Honk loudly and then the females will come in and mate with the selected preferred males. Of course, there's always a question, you know, if there are females that are preferable and most females mate with them, why are the others coming? You know, we don't know. Maybe this is their only chance to get to find a mate. So we're not sure about that. Maybe if they were alone, they had no chance and this gives them some chance. Right, but these are still, again, these are examples for questions that are still very fundamental and still open.
- [15:42]
Gregory McNeff
Okay, great answer, Yossi. I'm going to push back slightly. And I circled this quote twice in the book. I believe Bradbury described these hammerhead bats as quote, the dumbest bats I've raised is still a successful strategy. And then I'm just guy to guy here. What do you make of the fact that there's a correlation that maybe 10% of the bats get the lion's share of the mating responses, which almost mirrors online dating today. In fact, you quote a Tinder stat that is roughly in the same ballpark. I don't want to put you on the spot, but we'd love your thoughts on that.
- [16:22]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah. Regarding them being dumb, I think it's just an interesting observation when we work with animals and bats specifically, I've worked with many species and some are, I don't want to say dumb, but some are dumb. They, they, but you know, when you say dumb, it means mostly that they don't learn what we want them to learn. You know, they're very smart in their other ways. But you know, if, if I want them to feed from a bowl, for example, and they don't, then I think, okay, this is a dumb bat. And I think that's what he meant. And indeed, when I would say, you know, if I, it would be more politically correct. I would say there, there's a, there's huge variability of being behavior and sometimes it's surprising. An animal, you know, as, as I say, it can, it can die in a bowl of food sometimes, you know, because it's used to eating differently or something like that. Yeah. Now regarding the lion's share thing is. Yeah, I think it's related to what I said. I mean, you know, you see groups of teenager boys, right? They aggregate and they court together and often there will be one of them is, you know, the best looking hotshot or whatever. But still, I think the others, and this is, you know, it's highly, I mean, speculating now. Okay, so, but you know, the others are learning and they Might sometimes benefit from the leftovers, you know, quotation marks. Nobody's a leftover, of course. And yeah, and I think that's what's happening maybe with these, with these, Lex. Right. So the ones that are not gaining everything they see, their peers, maybe they're improving. Maybe the ones that are more dominant or better disappear with time. And as I said, if you're not part of this, if you're all alone, your chances are even worse. I think that's the main hypothesis.
- [18:13]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah. No, it does seem like leking is an evolutionary strategy. And I know, I think you compare it to some cases where you can't defend the territories or defend the. It seems like a very efficient way for mating and reproduction. So there definitely is thought behind it.
- [18:30]
Yossi Yovel
It was just.
- [18:31]
Gregory McNeff
We always think of bats as very intelligent and the way he described them as dumbest was funny. I want to move on to communication and I want to distinguish that from echolocation. You write. Bats have an enormous range of communication signals, unlike the echolocation calls they use for sensing, which have to be short. And stereotypical communication calls may be long or short, whistling or chirping, ultrasonic or audible. Could you talk about their communication signals and how the capacity for vocal learning figures into that?
- [19:01]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, I think first of all, yeah, it's important to emphasize you've just read it, but echolocation calls were evolved for sensing and thus their characteristics are very, very specific. They're short, often high frequency, sometimes very wide band, which means a lot of frequencies. Social vocalizations are much more flexible, I would say. So you can have many types of social vocalizations species wise and, you know, so two related species can have completely different vocal systems because the functions there is, you know, it can be aggressive or it can be attracting the female or it can be display or many or offspring, mother oxygen, communication. So the different functions. But there's no physical optimum when you're sensing. There is a physical optimum. A short signal is better than a longer signal for this and that. The high frequency signal is better than the low frequency signal here. There's much more room, I would say evolutionarily for, for going in different directions. And that's why you see an enormous range of variability between species. Vocal learning is the ability to learn your vocalizations, which of course we humans have. It's very important. Many people will say this is very important for complex communication like human language because, you know, it allows you to adjust. It allows you to, to learn new signals. It allows you to adjust to local dialects. Maybe it allows you to learn and to prove to a female that you're a good learner, that your brain works well. There are a lot of potential explanations why is this a good feature. But we know that many, many animals don't have it. So, you know, I always give the dog example. So dogs, you know, even though if you isolate them, it will not be good for their social behavior, they do need to learn how to interact with other dogs. But in terms of the sounds that they produce, it will probably not change much. So they will bark anyway. Whether it's whether they heard barks when they were young or not, whether they heard adults or not, whether they were reared with adults or not. So and so, yeah, so and many, many animals are like this. I'm careful because the thing is, we don't know for sure because with many of these animals it's very hard. You know, the differences might be in the voice, might be very, very subtle. So it's not always that we know to tell one bar from the other. But still, that's the general idea and accepted idea is that most animals don't exhibit vocal learning. Now with bats, we and others have shown that there is some degree of vocal learning. It's not like a parrot that can mimic everything it hears or something like that, or a canary that can learn very new, complex songs. It's much more subtle. But we have found, and again, others, colleagues of mine have found that young bats are affected by what they hear in the roost and this will affect their adult vocalizations, which is, as I said, a prerequisite for a complex vocalization system. It can allow the emergence of dialects and more Perfect.
- [22:25]
State Farm Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [22:55]
Indeed Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to move your business forward. But first you need to find the right team. Start your search with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It can help you reach qualified candidates fast, ensuring your listing is the first one they see. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. See the results for yourself. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply.
- [23:26]
1-800-Contacts Advertiser
Ford Bluecruise hands free highway driving takes the work out of being behind the wheel, allowing you to relax and reconnect while also staying in control. Enjoy the drive in blue cruise enabled vehicles like the F150 Explorer and Mustang Mach E available feature on equipped vehicles. Terms apply. Does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com BlueCruise for more details.
- [23:54]
Gregory McNeff
Could you talk about what's unique about the sacked winged bats? I think again, Jack Bradbury actually made another discovery here.
- [24:02]
Yossi Yovel
So, yeah, so this is indeed Jack and when I said my colleagues, Miriam Knomchild, who continued his work and today is the leading researcher from Germany on this species. They live in a harem structure, which means there's a male with multiple females, something like up to eight, I think, or something like that. And the males invest a lot in courtship, so they have to invest in mating. So they constantly court the females, even though they only mate. If I remember correctly, there's a very short period every year where they mate, but they would still court them every day, both using pheromones, so chemicals and also singing. I think what's unique about them, the reason why they became such interesting models is actually because they roost on the bark of a tree and not inside a cave. And this shows you that sometimes these are the species that become popular for research, just because sometimes they're easier to track when the animal is sitting. For a bat, just observing it on a tree is a fantastic opportunity in comparison to the trouble of going into a cave or finding it in a crevice. So that's why they became super popular. I'm not sure that they are the only bats that do this complex vocal learning. So indeed, Miriam has shown that they're vocal learners, that the pups will learn their singing from the fathers. This is courtship singing. And thus you have the emergence of dialects, also regional dialects. So this is very similar to songbirds in a way. And you know, people are scientists are very much interested in vocal learners because we, of course, humans are vocal learners and understanding how the brain learns. So singing like talking, like dancing is basically a sequence of motorcycles operations. Right when I talk, when I sing, I'm operating a lot of muscles and I need to know how to do that precisely if I want to produce a certain sound. And how our brain learns to do that is a very big question in neuroscience and in general. And that's why I think people are so much interested in these bats.
- [26:16]
Gregory McNeff
Great answer. Yossi, could you talk briefly about the role of a vocal password for pups in a specific harem. And related to that, how females may have a preference for males with a local accent.
- [26:28]
Yossi Yovel
Right. So maybe let's talk about the second. So one of the questions is why vocal learning, right? I mean, if you can, like, if you're a dog or cat and you do have vocal signals and you can communicate without learning, why do you need learning? And one of the best explanations is that this is a way to prove your quality to a female. Right. When you're so singing, for example, as I said, singing is like a display. So if you're a better singer or if you can learn the songs of your father more correctly, this maybe indicates something about your brain. Another related, non mutually exclusive hypothesis that if you're singing the local dialect, this means that you're fit for this area, you know, where the food is, your body is immune to the local pathogens, and these are, you know, it's the same. We humans mostly prefer people with our own accent. Right. We use that to identify our local community or our culture. Right. So, yeah, So I think that's. And as I said, once you have vocal learning, you will have usually dialects. Right? Because if you learn the local song, you get some kind of an area where the local song spreads and, and it is separated from songs elsewhere. Yeah. The password is similar. It's more related to. It's less related to courtship and more to community. So people use it differently. But one idea is that if you sing the right song, it's like a password for the area. Whether it's a password that you're showing the females or maybe the colony depends on which species we're thinking of. But, you know, you're speaking the right dialect, let's say. So you're part of the group or part of the neighborhood. That's the idea.
- [28:20]
Gregory McNeff
Excellent. I have to say one of the most fascinating things, and again, I'll quote you here. Indeed, we discovered that bat communication contains much more information than we previously thought. Your team used AI to discern that the way bats address one bat was different than the way they addressed another bat. And you give the example of like, you know, good morning to, I think, you know, a parent versus good morning to your boss. Are they literally communicating? Maybe the same content but in a different way. How, how unique is that? And I have to ask you about AI because everyone gets asked about that. If you could briefly comment on AI in your research.
- [28:54]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, yeah. So indeed, we've done some work on it using AI. You know, I like, I prefer machine learning because AI is like an umbrella term for everything. But machine learning basically means that you're teaching a machine instead of kind of predefining the rules. So you give the machine many examples and it learns by itself. That's more or less what AI does, I would say. And indeed, what we've done is we took a huge cohort of, first of all, we recorded a lot of behavior, then we annotated a lot of behavior. So we looked at the interactions between the bats. When I say we, it's basically graduate students. I did very little of this and annotating what we humans could interpret. So I'm saying this especially, I'm emphasizing this because we're limited, right? We're humans. We'll talk about it later maybe, but we might be missing a lot of the interesting interactions. But still, we show that we can train a machine, a classifier, to identify the context and, as you said, also the addressee. So when two bats are communicating, we can say, the machine that we trained can say, what is the interaction about? Are they fighting over food or over sex? And also, to some extent, who is the addressee? So whether it's you and I talking, or am I talking to my, I don't know, friend or wife or whatever. And as you said, we think that that's based on the small differences in, in intonation. Right. So when I say leave that banana piece and I'm talking to somebody unfamiliar versus somebody I know who's dominant, then I will probably say it slightly differently. And those are probably the nuances that we, that we were picking up on.
- [30:43]
Gregory McNeff
Awesome. Before we move on to part two, why would people be disappointed to learn the content of what fruit flies talk about? What?
- [30:52]
Yossi Yovel
Fruit bats? You mean fruit bats?
- [30:54]
Gregory McNeff
I'm sorry, fruit bats? Yeah.
- [30:56]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah. I mean, we found fruit bats mostly communicate negatively. I, I, I could say so. But, you know, I always say this is, this is the communication that they need. So they live in these very, very crowded colonies where they're constantly bumping into each other and fighting over space. And that's most of their communication is about, is about get out of my way and, you know, give me that piece of food and why don't you want to mate with me? And that's what we found. And, you know, people are humans. They, they romanticize everything. You know, they're expecting bats to maybe cooperate, maybe come with me and let's go somewhere, I don't know, stuff like that, or maybe how beautiful you are, if it's a courtship song. So sometimes people ask me you know, why, you know, they don't. Is there, isn't there anything positive about the communication? Now, I should say these are fruit bats that I study. As I said earlier, we talked about the wing sack bats and they use singing, so that's definitely more romantic. But yeah, I think it does emphasize that communication evolves to the needs, based on the needs of the species. If this species doesn't cooperate when hunting, like wolves do, for example, then there is no such communication. It's not needed. Right. So, I mean, evolution will work according to the needs and not according to what, I don't know, we humans expected to do.
- [32:18]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah, no, absolutely. I want to move to certainly a theme that we associate with bats, echolocation. And it feels like the founding father is Donald Griffin here. Could you talk about his role in the field and specifically his contribution to our understanding of bats echolocation?
- [32:36]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, so maybe I'll say. Unfortunately, I did not get to interview him because he passed away, but I did talk with several of his direct students who are interviewed and their whole chapters about their work. So I did get a feeling maybe of what it was to be in his lab by talking to these people. And yeah, his contribution is tremendous. I mean, he simply is the first. He's the pioneer. He discovered it. I mean, he did work with another physiologist called Galambos, who should be mentioned. It's important. We often forget him, but still, I think his work was. He contributed most. And indeed, if you look at the first generation of. So I should say he realized that bats use sound for orienting. Okay, I didn't say this, but that's what he did. Basically, he started off by using an ultrasonic device and realizing that bats are emitting sounds constantly even though we can't hear them, and then proving that these sounds are used for orientation, they're not just emitted without a reason and even for hunting. Okay. And a lot of what we do today is based on his original. He really did a lot of experiments and a lot of what we do today is just kind of replicating his stuff with, I would say, more modern techniques. He also was a big fan of technology and pushed a lot of the use. So echolocation research is heavy on technology and he's. So it's probably thanks to Griffin in many ways.
- [34:06]
Gregory McNeff
I think.
- [34:07]
Yossi Yovel
I'm not an expert on Griffin, as I said, because I never really talked to him, but I think he was a very creative and not afraid scientist. So he also made a big contribution to animal consciousness, which these days is an emerging huge field. In those days it was kind of dangerous and ill advised to speak about animal consciousness. But today it's kind of accepted and there are many people studying it. And all of them go back to Griffin. He's one of the first was written about this topic. Yeah. So I think in many ways he influenced the field. But I wanted to say earlier that I think one of the reasons why I think this book is a good introduction to how science is done is because the discovery of echolocation is quite recent, late 30s, and it's not a huge field. So if you want to study DNA today, you would have to interview a thousand people. But people who've studied echolocation and bats, they're not so many. And you can really still track the history. Who was influenced by whom and where did this question come from? And that's why I enjoyed researching this. And I also think that whoever's interested in science, I think will find interest in this book.
- [35:20]
Gregory McNeff
Excellent. And one individual who also made a significant contribution to echolocation is Hans Ulrich Schnitzler. And you spend a fair amount of time talking about him and his way of doing that. It was a bit, you know, a little bit trial by error revising his hypotheses. And he was so young when he did this. I think he started out in his mid-20s. Could you talk about his contribution? And then the debate between him and I believe it's Simons, Jim Simmons, you're the second person to correct me on that.
- [35:50]
Yossi Yovel
Simmons.
- [35:51]
Gregory McNeff
That was so heated.
- [35:53]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, well, Uli Schnitzler, Hans Ulrichnitzer was also my advisor, my PhD advisor. So I also, I think I know this story very, very well. I really talked to him many times about this, I think. Yeah. As you said, he came out of the military in Germany and went straight to bats and very Fast acquired his PhD and became a leading scientist in the field. And I think what's most remarkable about his history is indeed he was an autodeduct. So he really developed the methods by himself. And also what's very interesting about his story is that his biggest discovery. I don't know if I want to go into all of the details because there's a lot of. It's quite complicated in terms of physics. But let's say he found how bats avoid Doppler shifts. So we know that Doppler shifts could be a big problem if you're using sound. Right. Doppler shifts are created by your own speed. And he found a strategy that bats use in order to Avoid that. And I think the nice thing about his finding is that he did it by mistake. So, I mean, he went into the research with one question, and just by making a mistake, he actually discovered this ability of bats to overcome Doppler shifts. And I think that's. For me, this was one of the most interesting stories. And I think, again, for people who are not scientists, for me, it's clear how this can happen as a scientist. But I think if you're not doing science every day, then it might even be surprising how things move. Yeah, one of his biggest. So that. That's. That was his first discovery, as you said. He found it when he was in his twenties, so very, very early. But then later on, he was part of a big debate with another scientist, Jim Simmons here in the US who was also a good example for somebody who came from a different discipline. He came from psychology, actually, and introduced psychological methods to the field of researching bats. And this is how he. I think, you know, he completely revolutionized how people experiment with bats. So he introduced the idea of psychophysics. Before that, Griffin and his students were mostly kind of flying bats, observing them. Flying. Flying them in rooms, observing them outdoors. But he came up with this idea of, let's teach the bats. Let's train them on a very, very precise, controlled experiment. And this allows us to kind of assess their borders if we want to know how accurate they are. And one of the biggest debates had to do with the ranging accuracy. So we know that with echolocation, you basically emit sound and assess the time that passes since between emission and reception. And this time can be translated into distance. Right? We know that because the speed of sound is fixed, there's some number. And if you measure time and, you know, speed, then, you know, distance. And bats probably use this all the time to assess the distances of objects. And again, without going into all of the details, Simmons came up with a measurement that claims that the bats were very, very accurate. So the order of hundreds of nanoseconds in terms of time, which is less than a millimeter in terms of range. So basically, he claimed that bats are. Can tell the distances of objects with a millimeter accuracy. And Schnitzler was one of the scientists who found that impossible. But, you know, instead of just fighting about it, they. They started experimenting. So in Germany, they started repeating, replicating the Simmons experiments. And actually most of the findings were replicated. So they had to admit that bats are much more accurate than they previously thought. It doesn't mean that they reached an agreement. They still Continued. So Siemens constantly found that the range is more accurate than we thought. Than he thought. And at some point, Schnitzler did not agree with this. And the field there was really a lot of. So I think that's a good example of how there's a big debate between two groups within a scientific field. This is something that we often see, and in this case even today, I mean, you know, I'm aware of a few such big, hot debates about different topics. And you can see here how it works. You know, how the two labs continue their work, how they fight, but also are friends of each other. And, yeah, I think I'll let the readers read the rest, but I think it's a nice example of how this happens in science.
- [40:44]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah, no, it's. I understand, very heated, also very collaborative. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you briefly about Alan Grinnell and his discovery that bats encode very weak signals that they receive in close proximity to strong signals. He seems like another real pioneer in the field.
- [41:01]
Yossi Yovel
Could you briefly.
- [41:02]
Gregory McNeff
His contribution?
- [41:03]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah. So Alan is again, one of these. He's one of Griffin's direct students. So I would say he's, you know, maybe Griffin is the pioneer, and he's like one of the first generation, I would say, of. Of echolocation scientists. And he's most renowned for recording the bat's brain. So, of course, after echolocation was described and then many of the big questions had to do with what is so unique about the bat's brain that allows it to process sound so accurately. I should say we still don't understand a lot of it. So we know some neurons we know about that are very, very unique for bats, neurons that measure time, which, as I said, is equivalent to distance. But still, there are a lot of things that we don't understand about the bat's brain. And Alan Grinnell was the first. And again, I think the story about how he came up to do this is very interesting. He was just by coincidence, he was in Woods Hole and he met another scientist, very famous at the time, doing physiological recordings with other animals. And that's how the idea came. And probably without this meeting, it would never. I mean, it would take many, many more years to have happened. And he's the first one that managed to put an electrode and record the brain of a bat. Yeah. By the way, I should say that most scientists, or I would say even all bat scientists, are bat lovers, and they really dislike this. And Alan Grinnell even stopped doing this quite early in his career. They are not happy with performing invasive studies with bats. So either we do it very, very carefully with very, very small numbers, or we avoid it. But in any case, the bat's brain is a very, very interesting evolutionary story.
- [43:02]
1-800-Contacts Advertiser
Experience a membership that backs your business journey with American Express business Platinum. Earn 5 times Membership Rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked on amextravel.com plus enjoy a welcome offer of 200,000 points after you spend $20,000 on purchases on the card within your first three months of membership. American Express Business Platinum there's nothing like it. Terms apply. Learn more at American Express American Express.com Business Platinum your planet is now marked for death.
- [43:35]
Marvel Studios Advertiser
Marvel Studios the Fantastic Four First Steps is now streaming on Disney.
- [43:39]
Yossi Yovel
We will protect you as a family.
- [43:41]
Marvel Studios Advertiser
Light em up Johnny Marvel's first family is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. That is fantastic and critics say it's one of the best superhero movies of all time. Marvel Studios the Fantastic Four first steps now streaming on Disney. Rated PG13 what time is it, Ben? It's clobber time.
- [44:01]
Microsoft Copilot Advertiser
Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema after an initial four month or longer dosing phase. About 4 in 10 people taking EBGLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.
- [44:21]
Eczema Treatment Advertiser
MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have New Orleans worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Eglis before starting ebglis. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.
- [44:55]
Microsoft Copilot Advertiser
Ask your doctor about eglis and visit eglis.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.
- [45:02]
Gregory McNeff
And you know that's a question I've been meaning, I want to ask you, how does bats intelligence compare to overall primate intelligence and human intelligence? Like you were saying, they are doing calculus in their head in real time. That's just unbelievable. I mean, they, they seem to be very, very intelligent animals. Are they more intelligent than us?
- [45:24]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah. So I think, I think that bats are really good examples for why it's dangerous to ask about animal intelligence and compare between species. Because, you know, as I always say, you know, in terms of echolocation, they are definitely better than us. So. Well, are they more intelligent than us? And yes, you know, in this specific axis, they are. You know, some tiny bats can navigate hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometers, which we would have difficulties doing. Right. So again, you know, they're very, they're very, very good. So, yeah, as I said, it's hard to compare intelligence. Animals will have intelligence that fits their needs. Right. And if it's a simple worm that finds bacteria on, on some surface, maybe all it needs is to avoid heat or to remember the smell of the bacteria or something like that, and that will be its intelligence. So that's why it's very, very difficult, I think, to compare. Of course, the size of the brain does play some role and we have very, very large brains with almost 10 to the 11th neurons. And bats have smaller brains. Some of them are very tiny. Some bats are, you know, only a few centimeters inside in size and their brains are millimeters in size. So they have, you know, orders of magnitude fewer neurons. But again, as I said, you know, for their needs, echolocation or maybe navigation or maybe social behavior, they, they will be intelligent, I don't want to say more or less than us. They, they. Many bats learn quickly. Many bats are flexible, which are signs. These are all signs of intelligence, in my opinion. Some bats, we've shown some bats remember where they have been, when they have been. So they have this kind of episodic, like memory. And these are all signs of high intelligence.
- [47:15]
Gregory McNeff
Before we move on to part three in evolution, could you talk about how moths defend against bats? Echolocation, I guess they can jam the signal. I found that amazing as well.
- [47:28]
Yossi Yovel
First of all, I would say they can hear the signal. There are many moths that can hear the signal. Most insects cannot hear bats, you know, and they'll be eaten by a bat without even knowing. Some moths have evolved the ability to hear ultrasound, and maybe that's as a result of bat predation, we're not sure. And some moths probably also interfere with bats. So many moths produce sounds that are in the frequency Range of echolocation. Some of them might be just to startle the bats, you know, so once I'm caught, I just emit these sounds. So the bat just lets go. And there is at least one species of moth that produces very, very loud wideband noise, which is similar to jamming. You know, with radar, we see similar stuff. We see jamming of or with GPS, jamming of the frequency range by emitting very noisy signals that just completely block the bat signal. And there is at least one moth that we think is doing this.
- [48:35]
Gregory McNeff
Okay, I want to move on to evolution. And another key figure there is Fenton. I believe you actually took his class. Brock Fenton. Could you talk about his role in discovering bat fossils and how that led him to certain understanding of echolocation?
- [48:52]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah. So Brock Fenton is a. One of the most colorful, I would say, people in ecology, in bat research. Sorry. And he's been really a big teacher in the field, moving around the world and teaching students everywhere how to study bats and about bats and how to research them. And one of the things he's contributed to, he's a very broad scientist. He's done a lot of things, but one of the things he's been interested in is our fossils and specifically the evolution of echolocation. So there's a big question, first of all, how do we know when we find a fossil, how do we know if it's echolocated? Right. That's a big question that we don't have a good answer to. And Brock came up with this. Brock and his student, I should say, came up with this idea that maybe if you look at the bones of the inner ear, you can say something about whether this ancient bat echolocated. There's still debate about this. Not everybody agrees, but there seems seem to be cues that Separate echolocating bats vs non echolocating bats based on their inner ear. Again, think about this. I think it's a very interesting problem. You have a fossil and you want to know something about its sensory system and whatever. You know, fossils, most of what you have are bones. Right. How can you know, based on the bones, whether. I don't know, it had color vision, for example.
- [50:20]
Gregory McNeff
Right.
- [50:21]
Yossi Yovel
So, yeah. So Fenton and colleagues looked into one of these early echolocating bats and. Sorry, he looked into one of these early fossils and claimed that based on their inner ear, it was likely not non echolocating. Okay. There are two major questions I would say with bats. When did they start echolocating and when did they start flying? And what's the connection between the two, with flight, it's easier. We see the limbs, it's very clearly, you can see wings. Maybe there's a debate on whether it was flying perfectly or just gliding and flying or something like that, but it's very clear that it already had wings. We're talking about fossils that are more or less lived around 55 million years ago. And we think that that's when the first bats evolved, more or less 55 to 60 million years ago, maybe a little bit before that. Yeah. So he, as I said, they CT scan the fossils and they claim that it's not non echolocating. And then Nancy Simmons, a colleague, but also in this case disagreed with him and claimed, and she's an expert, she's a curator in the Natural History Museum in New York and, you know, an expert on fossils and studied many fossils and she claims that, you know, based on the situation of this fossil that is crushed, it's hard to say whether the, you know, it's all about whether two tiny bones in the inner ear were connected or not to each other. So she claimed that they were not. And I think the debate is still ongoing. But again, I think it's a good example. As you see, there are many questions that are left unanswered, but another good example of how people just approach these questions and try to answer them.
- [52:12]
Gregory McNeff
And Yoshi, just to close out on Fenton, he takes a third approach. Right, Like a tandem hypothesis.
- [52:19]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah.
- [52:19]
Gregory McNeff
Could you briefly describe his sort of, I guess it's flight and echolocation evolved simultaneously or in tandem.
- [52:27]
Yossi Yovel
Right. So in terms. Exactly. So in terms of, as I said, there's the echolocation first, the flight first. And he suggests that maybe they evolve together. The idea is that echolocation costs a lot of energy. If you were shouting without flying, that's something very, very difficult. When you start flying, it reduces the energy energetic costs because you can use your wingbeat in order to produce a lot of pressure and emit sound. So the coupling of wing beats to a sound emission reduces your energetic costs. And he claims that that's why they've probably evolved together. You know, we do know that they appear, it's more or less at the same time, but, you know, it can be millions of years apart still. So, yeah, I don't think we know.
- [53:11]
Gregory McNeff
Absolutely. I want to follow up one more thought on evolution. Specifically, you say evolution equipped bats for pregnancy and migration. Could you briefly expand on that?
- [53:23]
Yossi Yovel
So, yeah, so regarding migration, I'll just say that many bats migrate and this is, we know, much less about migration, bat migration in comparison to bird migration, because they're small, because they're nocturnal, you know, they're hard to track. But there is new research and even since I've written the book, there's already new research about bat migration. Because today we have smaller and smaller senses that can be placed on the animals. We know of migration in Europe that is several thousands of kilometers long. We know of migration in south or Central America that is also thousands of kilometers long. Maybe one thing that I'll say is that a lot of bats switch their. We call this regional migration. They might fly just shorter distances to a hibernacula. So in many areas like northern America, bats will hibernate in winter and they will fly sometimes, you know, not very, very long distances, but they will fly to their cave, which we call a hibernacula, where they hibernate. So this is another kind of migration that is very common in bats regarding pregnancies, and it's related, I think what you meant, what I'm talking about in the book is their ability to postpone their pregnancy. So a lot of bats will become pregnant towards the end of summer and then they will hibernate. So during hibernation they pause pregnancy and basically they restart it again. There are two different strategies of doing this. Either the fetuses just stops growing or there's even no or. Fertilization only occurs after hibernation. So they store sperm basically. But in both cases, the idea is that you cope with hibernation by pausing pregnancy and then you continue it once you're finished with hibernation. So hibernation again is a very unique, you know, not unique because more mammals in these regions do this. But a very remarkable, I would say characteristic. Bats will lower their body temperature to more or less ambient temperature. So this can be like 4 degrees Celsius or something like that. And they will only occasionally wake up in order to. Sorry, to pee or get rid of, you know, whatever they need and eat very, very little, if at all during these months.
- [55:50]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah, it's another amazing feature. I mean, these animals are just insane how well they're adapted. I want to go to park for nature conservation and you write here, you mentioned the number of predators, but I'll just jump to the end here. But the reality is bats number one enemy is undoubtedly the human being. And I want to drill into that. But first I do want you to take a shot at, quote, the million dollar question, which is how many bats die each year?
- [56:20]
Yossi Yovel
Yeah, well, if you sum up all reasons, then I really even don't know. In the book, I'm talking about this question in relation to wind turbines, which are killing tons of bats. And we don't even know there. What are numbers. But even there, people talk about, you know, between hundreds of thousands and even millions per year. Mostly in Europe and North America, where you have so many wind turbines. And there's still a lot of debate, but bats seem to be attracted to wind turbines, at least some species. And I should say they're not. They probably cannot not notice the blades because the blades are turning, rotating very, very fast. You know, their edges are moving in hundreds of kilometers per hour. So it's not something that a bat would even notice. Yeah. So it doesn't. You know, the bats are dying by. Are being killed, you know, by humans who are just burning down colonies in many places because they think they bring disease or, I don't know, interfere with their crops. You have bats dying of disease that is usually somehow related to humans, not necessarily infected by humans, but, you know, cast by humans at least. And more and more. So, yeah, I don't know what are the numbers, but definitely many, many bad species are endangered. And the main reason is human interference, anthropogenic interference with their habitats. Right. So whether it's getting rid of caves of roosts or forests or, you know, today, another phenomenon that we're observing is the reduction in insects globally, which is, of course, another big threat for insectivorous animals like bats. So, you know, I, you know, I don't even know if this. If bat situation is worse than other mammals. It's a general phenomena that we see a decline in biodiversity. I just know that bats are definitely being threatened by humans more than anything else.
- [58:24]
Gregory McNeff
Yossi, how effective do you think? Either regulatory changes or technology. I think you cite a use case of using drones to keep them away from turbines. Do you think there's any application there or we might have some success on those two fronts?
- [58:40]
Yossi Yovel
I think maybe. Let's take the wind energy as an example, because the wind energy, it's good. In general, we want wind energy. We don't want to be using carbon fuels. And so people refer to this as a green, green dilemma. Right. On the one hand, we want green energy. On the other hand, we're affecting biodiversity. And, you know, and when we affect bats, it's not only. It's not only that we now will not have these beautiful creatures. You know, bats are insectivorous. Bats are tremendous pesticides or they replace chemical pesticides. Right. And the contribution to the system is Enormous so, and probably we don't even understand it. So we're maybe helping ourselves by polluting less, but maybe polluting more, reducing one term one form of pollution, CO2 pollution with green energy, but then creating another, increasing chemical pollution, for example. So yeah, so that's why I think again, it's an interesting example of such one of these modern phenomena that we're observing. And here I think that as you said, the regulation can make a big difference. We know that. We know that if you introduce curtailment measures such as stopping the wind turbines below a certain wind speed around 6 meters per second, more or less, that's where bats are active. So just by doing that, which doesn't reduce the productivity much, you save the bats like you save most of the bats. So today, you know, today the entrepreneurs are trying to build more and more efficient turbines that will work even in lower airspeed. But I think, you know, that that's where we need to compromise. I think, I mean, we have to force them, the entrepreneurs, businessmen, to compromise. You know, we should say, okay, look, you're making green energy is great. You're, you're getting a lot of money. We should help them, we governments. I mean, we should make it cheap to build whatever. But you know, you should stop your turbines at a certain airspeed and in this case, you know, you're going to lose a little bit of money, but we're going to save most of the bat. So not always I have such a simple solution. I think not always such a simple solution exists, but I think here it's actually a good example of where you need to impose these regulations and maybe even assist the entrepreneurs financially if needed, compensate them or something like that. But I think we do see a solution and hopefully for other problems we can see a similar solution. I think there is a solution here.
- [61:21]
Gregory McNeff
Yeah, no, you lay it out really nicely in several chapters. Before I turn to my last question, could you briefly talk about your research?
- [61:28]
Yossi Yovel
Sure. I mean, my research is diverse. Maybe I'll say, maybe I'll talk about one aspect that is related to this anthropogenic problem. One of the things we've been doing in the past almost 15 years is to develop miniature sensors that can be placed on the bats. GPS devices, microphones, accelerometers, body temperature sensors and so on. And these are very, very small, only a few gram devices. We didn't say this yet, but bats are mostly small. So the biggest bats weigh less than 1 kilo and most bats are much, much smaller than that. So we had to develop very, very small sensors because there are no off the shelf, similar devices. And that's something we've been doing in the past decade. And we've been using it to study navigation and social behavior. And one of the things, and I think this is related to your previous question, so maybe I'll talk about it, is that we look at how bats behave in cities. So urbanization is one of the biggest, of course, interferences for animals and fruit. Bats actually go into the cities. They're not afraid. They don't hesitate. They're bold, if you want, they go into the city and they roost in the cities, and they will exploit the city. And we show with a lot of research how they will actually maybe benefit even from the fact that there's a lot of fruit in the city. And what we've done is we initiated our own. We established our own colony in the university. We have a colony, but it's an open colony. So the bats are free. They come and go. And this allows us to track, to monitor the same bats over many, many years. So we can look at how they raise their pups, for example, and how they remember. Do they remember where they've been previously? And so on and so on. And those are things that we're looking into.
- [63:28]
Gregory McNeff
Excellent. I want to close out with your epilogue. As we pointed out, you've interviewed pretty much the experts in the field, and you end the book by interviewing the philosopher Thomas Nagel on his article, what is it like to be a Bat? And I'll quote him briefly here. Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life. How close do you, Yossi, I mean, you're probably the best person to ask, are we to understanding that? And will we ever eventually get there?
- [64:02]
Yossi Yovel
Okay, so regarding the second half, I can say we will never get there because of what Thomas Nagel said. He said it already, you know, we will never be able to. I will never know what it is like to be Gregory. Right. I will just never. I mean, there is maybe, you know, in a million years, they'll be able to transplant your brain into my body and somehow connect them and maybe. But you know, we will. I don't think we'll ever be able to. And that's the reason. So. And, you know, it's a million times more difficult to know what it is like to be a bat because we don't even have the beginning. But I would say that we are. You know, that's our goal. Our goal is to find objective ways, paradigms, methods, approaches to study what it is like to be a bat. And Thomas, indeed, you know, he agrees with that. I had a conversation with him, and he even writes it in that. In that Very, very famous. You know, his article is super famous. There's every philosopher, every student in philosophy has read it, and that's what he says. I'm not against trying to understand by using objective research what it is like being a bat. And, yeah, and I think we're learning every day, but it's not as if we're getting closer. Maybe we're even getting farther. We understand better now what we don't understand.
- [65:19]
Gregory McNeff
That's an interesting take and a great way to end the interview. Again, the book is the Genius the Secret Life of the Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal by Yossi Yovel. Yossi, thank you so much for writing such a fascinating book and for your time today. It was really a great conversation.
- [65:37]
Yossi Yovel
Thank you for reading so carefully.
- [65:45]
Gregory McNeff
It's really a great conversation.