Whistle while you work

I made up a song.

Sung to the tune of MMMBop, it goes:

Mmm BAT, mmm mmm mmm BAT,
Mmm BAT, mmm mmm mmm BAT,
Etc., until a co-worker enters the laboratory.

Notes from an evolutionist

Every year, my alma matter has a campus-wide event where all the departments showcase themselves and all the research museums are open to the public. This occurred last Saturday.

My supervisor and I work closely with the vertebrate zoology museum for the bat side of our research and as a gesture of goodwill, we put together a "bats of California" exhibit for the event. So I spent Saturday morning manning the bat station, answering people's questions. And of course children say the dumbest darnedest things.

A trio of boys asked one of those pesky "why" question (why do bats have big ears? Why to bats fly? Why do they have weird noses?) that prompted me to explain that bats had evolved that way over many thousands of years.

"Evolve?" one the towheaded little hellspawn asked.

"Yeah, like Pokemon!" said one of his friends, who then looked at me for confirmation.

"Yeah, sure a little bit like Pokemon I guess." I shrugged, having only the faintest idea how Pokemon evolve. "Eh, close enough," I thought, "at least they recognize the word."

So future biology professors? If in roughly ten years you have any biology students who have some notion of evolution as a bizarre mishmash of point-based Lemarkian leveling up?

Um, my bad.

Snicker

Here is a journal article on bats with hats.

Saturday Silliness

Artistic representation of what a bat flying house might look like.

Hopefully, the stupid is not contagious

Today I was looking at the paperwork for a bat and it said:

"R.P. found bat flying house, ejected it, found it DOA next morning"

First, holy shit! Flying houses? And why would a bat be piloting the flying house?

And second, Dead On Arrival? Where was it coming from? Was there a mini bat ambulance with mini bat paramedics dramatically yelling "don't die on me now damn it"?

Bat News

Are you ready for the coolest animal ever?

It's a newly discovered bat species...



With suction cups!

I highly recommend Googleing the genus "Myzopoda" for close up photos of these suckers in action (both the wings and feet have cups.)

I discovered this family of bats (until this new species, only one representative was known to exist) on this website. It is sobering to see such unique permutations of life slipping away into the past, as global biodiversity dwindles. Soon it will only be humans and the few species capable of surviving us.

What if...

Bats came in bright blue?

That would be interesting.

And now, bats!

More bat blogging from PZ Myers

Meanwhile, bat flocking in Fresno (thanks to A-WALL for the heads up.)

This concludes today's bat news break.

UPDATE: A link to E-STEWART who also mentioned the bat flocking story on his blog.

Pro-bat

Would you abort this precious wittle bay-bee?

So I was looking for a picture of a pig embryo this morning before work (what, you don't wake up some mornings with the burning desire to see pictures of embryonic swine?)

There was a nebulous idea for a post about first trimester abortions and I wanted to have a picture of a pig embryo to show that well, all embryos really kind of look alike.

Through some combination of search terms on Google I discovered only the most awesome embryos ever: bat embryos.

As it turns out, the photos were in the archives of a blog I was familiar with. The post was about a paper on embryonic bat development and there are several other bat embryo pictures from the paper. Go, see, enjoy. I sure did.

Although I'm not a regular (i.e., daily) reader of the blog, not too long ago the blog's author had a post about the Y chromosome which I enjoyed quiet a bit.

Happy Halloween

And now, dead bats!





And some lives ones!



And a really well-hung bat!




And me thinking about how great bats are!

Submittal Form Haiku II

Query the county:
Was the bat alive, sick, dead?
Alive, but not well.