We never thought that the first time we would feel like scientists would be when we were splattered with bat poo, lying on the forest floor outside of a tiny village in rural Australia.
Ostensibly, we were there to see if bats are lefties. Or righties. Or bothies. We had been tasked to see if bats exhibit a preference for a side when hanging upside down.
We were in pairs, one person with binoculars trained on a randomly chosen bat, calling out when a bat switched feet, while the other person took note of the time. Afterward, we counted up how many seconds out of five minutes the bat spent on each or both of its legs. We took our measurements in the early morning, when the bats had returned from their nightly insect feast, and again in the early afternoon, during their naptime, and finally at dusk, when they began to wake up.
This day, among the bats was one of many intimate encounters with nature that we have experienced in the rainforests and reefs of Far North Queensland, Australia. The program focuses on natural and cultural ecology, including instruction on traditional Aboriginal knowledge from elders, as well as field ecology from Western scientists. Both of us are majoring in biology with a correlate or second major in a humanities field, making this program the perfect opportunity to delve into the intersection of science and culture. Although our project’s main purpose was to conduct a scientific study, we left thinking about far more than just results.
Some of the spectacled flying foxes—bats with a wingspan of up to a meter—would twist around to peer at us from upside down; many of them shrieked the pitchy “Wa-wa,” akin to that of a premature baby, grouchy when we stirred too much beneath them; all of them rained poop down on us. We got dizzy peering through the binoculars; we got leg cramps, we got ticks (we were told, by several unfazed Australians, that it is paralysis tick season). I got poop on my “I heart NYC” shirt (it stains, apparently). We even secured the data we were after, but above all, we gained insight into what it means to be a scientist. Specifically, what it means to be a scientist enraptured by a creature that is threatened, misunderstood and vital.
There were times when we simply lowered the binoculars to stare at a sky full of upside-down faces, or when we swore that the bats stared back at us, just as ponderous about us as we were of them. We began to care, to squeal with excitement. We were not, by any means, “unattached” from our subjects of observation. In a world where creatures and ecosystems, and the means of protecting them, are rapidly disappearing, maybe more scientists—more people!—should spend more time lying on the forest floor just looking up.
A huge part of conservation involves public education and support. For most people, it is hard to support a cause when they are not given a reason to care. As silly as it sounds, lying on the ground covered in poop is an incredible way to find this reason.
In Australia, many people view flying foxes as a nuisance. They are loud, stinky and associated in the minds of many with disease. What many people do not see are the complex inter-bat relationships, their personalities, how vital they are as seed dispersers and forest regenerators… and their downright adorable faces. After spending two hours in their world, we were able to see why ecologists and conservationists care so much.
The bat world is not much different from ours. They argued with their neighbors, created safety measures to protect their young, yelled at the strange humans beneath them and even yawned when they got sleepy. It is hard to imagine that anyone could spend even half of the time we did with these animals and not feel a connection.
This connection is key to protecting our beautiful rainforest—a habitat crucial for absorbing carbon dioxide, supporting the water cycle and hosting unfathomably intertangled biodiversity. Flying foxes are long-distance seed dispersers and pollinators, helping to ensure the success of tropical rainforests in Australia.
Currently, flying foxes face a number of challenges stemming from human interactions. Barbed wire fences snare them at night and lead to extensive wing damage; pesticides are suspected to result in birth defects; and habitat loss moves them to urban areas where they face more dog attacks and car accidents.
Part of conservation efforts for flying foxes, but also for every threatened and endangered species in the world, needs to involve empathy. It is easy to label ecology as a hard science with no room for emotion, but emotion is an important driver for enacting and sustaining real change. As much as scientists put their energy into a topic, without public attention and involvement, this energy will not take us anywhere.
At the end of the day, we ran the numbers and found that, although most of the bats held on with both of their feet, when they switched to one foot, they always picked the same one. It turns out that there are about the same number of bats that prefer their left to right as there are bats that prefer their right to left. This preliminary evidence took less than two days, a pair of binoculars and a sacrificed pair of shorts to produce, yet we walked away with much more. We left with an understanding of what it is going to take to be conservation scientists. Even if it means putting our heart on the line, which is exhausting and risky, we have to care. Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming desensitized to loss and doing nothing.
