October 2, 2012 • 30 mins
Bats live in a sonic universe. They call out into the night and construct the world from their song. They listen to the sounds of prey, predator and the social squeaking of other bats. In this episode, Robert and Julie listen in on the song of the bat.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and we just
recorded a fairly long episode about bats called The Wild
World of Bats. And hopefully you've you've listened to that
one before you listen to this one. Not that you
(00:26):
have to, but I think that's a preferred listening order.
But but but in that podcast, we talked about a
lot about the ways of bats, in the way that
the ways that they've come to own the night, um,
how they live in this this different realm of the
senses um. And we also mentioned a philosophical paper by
one Thomas Nagle, and we read a quote from that.
(00:47):
But his whole point is that we as humans have
are perhaps incapable of understanding the viewpoints of other species,
be it be at a dog, a cat, a bat,
or you know, an alien being of some sort on
another planet. We just can't we can't really compare ourselves
in their mind because we're not privy to um all
(01:08):
the experiences that make them what they are. And uh,
and with the bat, we see that, especially in its
echolocation and its use of song. Basically it's use of song,
it's use of sound to see the world around it
and experience it and interact with it. Yeah, because remember
this is really the aspect of bats that make that
successful really if you look at it. Of course the
(01:30):
flying is important, but the ability to have this sort
of song um is what makes this UH as what
your Dr. George Pollock says, a rich sensory exotica. And
I love that because we're really going to try to
delve into that today, like what does it mean to
be a creature who depends on echolocation and how does
it change your understanding of the physical world. So, just
(01:53):
to to briefly mention echolocation again, I think radar thinks sonar.
The bat sends out a signal, a sound signal goes
out and waves, it hits something, it bounces back, and
there's something maybe the wall of a canyon, which we
can relate to in an echo. If we're standing in
a canyon, we we hear our sound um flow out
(02:14):
from us and return to us. But then with the bat,
we're also talking about UH the ability to balance off
of very small objects, moving objects such as a moth
moving around in the night that would make a tasty,
tasty snack, as well as the movements of other creatures
and other things in the night. UM a lot of
In most cases, the echolocation sound is an extremely high
(02:35):
pitched noise, so high that it's beyond human hearing. But
the their vocal communication is is again, it is, it is.
It's rich. It's not just a bat. Squawk at the
squawk at that, and squawk at this other thing and
see what happens. You see a vast array of squeaks
and squawks and babbles. Uh. In many cases, we're talking
(02:55):
about elaborate songs that they're basically there. To get a
little ideic about it, they're they're sort of singing the
world around them into existence. Yeah, and it is finally
tuned so they can of course adjust the pitch, the frequency,
all different aspects of of of what they're emitting in
order to get the right kind of data back that
they want. And also when you think about this, UM,
(03:17):
you know the sort of data that it's hitting Like
a moth, it's not just a moth, it's every single
thing that is in that vicinity that's coming back that
it now has to make sense of. Um. They are
not only detecting, detecting and hunting objects, but they are
forming three dimensional images of these objects on the basis
of sound. Like it's all coming together in their mind
(03:38):
in a way that we really can't quite fathom. Yeah. So,
so they know where they are in space, they know
the verticality of this object or thing, they know the distance,
and they can see, really they can see with their
ears flying at speeds of forty miles an hour while
doing this, And I mean, I love the idea that
that they that it even has a sense of amarants
(04:00):
and dax. That's just amazing to even fine wrap your
head around. Um. Now, it's worth noting that despite the
saying blind is a bat, bats are not blind. Most
bats have sides. Sometimes the side is a little uh
certainly less developed of their senses. But but in something
(04:21):
in case, they have very acute eyesight. So it's not
that they're hearing and singing and not seeing. They're seeing
as well. But but it's just part of the the
overall sense experience. And this is also part of the
adaptation becoming a nocturnal creature. Okay, so bats are using
biosnar to get information about their target, the distance, the
(04:42):
direction in the nature. Um. But when echo locating bats
approach a target, they move in actually three phases. The
first is a search phase, and it's a call with
constant features and long intervals between the calls, and the
second is an approach phase. And the last phase as
is called a feeding buzz. And during a feeding buzz
(05:02):
that that shortens the duration of its calls and the
intervals between them. UM. So what you'll see is that
these echolocation calls of bats have two major patterns. And
then the first pattern is called a high duty cycle,
in which that separate the pulse and the echo and frequency.
And these calls are long and they're separated by short
(05:24):
periods of silence and dominated by a single frequency. And
the second pattern is called a low duty cycle, and
that separate the pulse and the echo and time, and
these calls are short and separated by long periods of
silence and are not dominated by a single frequency. So
already you can see there's a ton of stuff going
on here and what seems to be just a simple,
(05:46):
you know, immediate emitting of sound. There's some cool research
that came out of a University of Maryland's bat lap
and I love that they have a battle. Um, tell
me this real quick. In researching this, do you think
there were were you finding more in more studies about
bats that were conducted by German scientists or German labs. Yeah,
there was a couple of dominant ones. Yeah, so I
(06:08):
wasn't sure. Am I just noticing it more when Germans
are studying bats or are Germans actually studying back? Well?
That and I noticed in Austen too, there's quite a
few researchers of course they have a huge bat public.
Yeah okay, sorry, So anyway back the undensity of Maryland's
bat lab, they found the bats they were studying that
they were they were using their their echolocation uh to
(06:30):
to find a target, obviously, but they were not aiming
their guiding waves directly at the target. Instead, they were
alternately pointing the sound beam to either side of the target,
which the researchers argue is a strategy that optimized with
the bat's ability to pinpoint the location of a target,
but also makes it hard for them to detect a
target in the first place. Okay, so on either side
(06:51):
of the target, that's where they tried to put their focus. Yeah,
almost kind of like like hurting an animal, like I'm
I'm looking here, I'm looking where You're not to know
where you are? But isn't there something about chopping wood,
like you don't aim for the center or there's some
sort of zen. Yeah, but then they also have a
zen neural response to Bats can separate the massive amount
(07:13):
of echoes returning from their centar pulses by distinguishing changes
in amplitude. This is the intensity of the sound between
different parts of each echo within one point five decibels
to decide whether the object is a target or just
background clutter. And the minute change in amplitude is enough
to cause a delay in the bat's neural response to
(07:36):
an echo, letting that bat know what's clutter and what's
the target. Again, imagine that these um, these creatures are
moving through space at forty miles per hour. They're doing
all of this as they're approaching the target, and as
they continue to to hone in on it, they still
are getting data and adjusting accordingly. Wow. Yeah, they're incredible creatures.
(07:56):
Have you have you seen a horror movie called The Descent?
I have not? Okay, well The Descent. First of all,
if you like horror, movies and you haven't seen The Descent,
you should check it out because, in my opinion, one
of one of, if not the best horror films to
come out in recent decades. But it deals with cave explorers,
amateur splunkers I guess, who are going down into an
(08:17):
unexplored cave and there they encounter this uh ghoulish humanoid
species that you get the impression that is that has
evolved from humans that that took to the caves in
some ancient time. So now they're there are these pale,
ghastly blind humanoid creatures that to use echolocation to find
(08:39):
prey and to determine where they are in this dark,
underground environment. So in a sense, it's kind of the
film's kind of an attempt to uh to understand the
mind of the bat and understand the sense room of
the bat, because you have these scenes, these frightening scenes
of these creatures that will be very near the their
target that they can't see them, so they'll they'll be
screeching and hollering in these awful tone in order to
(09:00):
see the environment around them. That is horrifying. Yeah, but
a location um. One of the cool things about that
Zen neural response. Uh. And I was just thinking about
that too. Even within that nightmare scenario, you do have
that so much chaos, so much clutter going on, And
what researchers are saying is that that is that zen
(09:22):
navigation ability. It's almost like bats have a main screen
that keeps locked on its target and is trying to
filter all the neural information, the neural response to the echoes,
and then it's almost like it has a secondary screen
that keeps note of all the surrounding stuff behind that.
It's fascinating because it's it's really doing this the bat brain,
(09:42):
and this is doing the same thing the human brain
does because and this is something that really becomes obvious
in artificial intelligence when we're trying to develop um a
computer developer robot that can navigate a human environment and
interact with humans and not accidentally decapitate them as something
because the human environments, say a cocktail party, but that's
(10:03):
an example that's come up in some of these artificial
intelligence papers. Imagine a cocktail party, all of the chaos
that's going on around you, you know, just if you
go to something some sort of social engagement this uh,
this week, do think about this like they're the conversation.
There's a conversation you're involved in. There's maybe the conversation
that you're eavesdropping on. They are the conversations you're not
(10:24):
privy to. There there's the the movement of people, the
movement of food. There's music, there might be something on
a TV in the background. The weather might be doing
something out the window. There are pets moving around. It's
chaos and our but our brain has to decide what
is important, what is worth focusing on, what is the
what is the story, what is the path through this chaos?
And it has to to make a small slice of
(10:47):
order out of it. So that's what goes on in
our brain, and that's what's going on with the bat brain,
only with some different pieces and flying through the air
at forty right, So it really isn't then the navigation
so that you don't fixate on the wrong thing. Um,
this was astounding too. This was some information that you
sent me about the sound of our breathing being something
(11:10):
that bats can actually pick up on and and capitalize on.
And of course we're talking about vampire bats here, because
most bats really don't care what humans are up to,
certainly on a on a breath level. But the vampire
bat uh he or she is interested because that's a
meal that's as good as a cow right there. Blood
taste good. And if it can land near that human
(11:32):
and then crawl up to it and start to open
a little cut in the next day and start laughing away,
then all the better. And yeah, they've they've connected studies.
They found that they can they can recognize pray by
the sound of its breathing, and really can can recognize
human human breathing the sound of human breathing better than
humans can. Yeah, didn't they didn't uh an experiment where
(11:55):
they had some I believe it was cow's blood was
the reward, and they had some um film clips of
humans breathing and so when they match it up, they
got the reward. And then they pair them with the
the humans who were supposed to detect the breath patterns,
and humans were kind of awful at it in comparison.
(12:15):
That's just not something we're programmed for. No, no, But
it's a it's a little bit freaky, I guess, because
you're thinking about the possibility of a vampire about actually
stalking you, and this is what it's using it for right. Um,
But of course vampire abouts mainly feed on cattle, so
we don't have to be too worried about it. But
of course most bats aren't concerned with human blood. They're
(12:37):
concerned with insects. And UH found this really interesting. There
was a study from the Max Plank Institute and they
found that bats can cut in on the sound of
insect coupling. So in the same way that say, adjacent
vorhees cannot resist killing teenagers while they're having sex. Uh,
(12:58):
these bats can don't resist the opportunity of two insects
having sex. Because they're they're occupied, and they're making a
lot more noise than usual. It's the perfect time to
zoom in and eat them. It really is a slash
or film right because flies right, and this is the
example that was given, is that flies normally at night
aren't very active, so they wouldn't put put off too
(13:21):
many sound waves. But yes, when they're doing the deed,
that is when they are um usually going to be
eaten by a bat. So what I think is fascinating
about that is it always boils down to in nature
that that that if you're going to copulate, it can
come at really high stakes, you know. I mean, because
you take one second out to do the deed, and
(13:43):
all of a sudden you become someone's lunch or dinner.
And certainly you have you have animals that take far
less time with the act than others. I mean, that's
a whole podcast in and of itself. But but yeah,
if you're if you're an insect and you're out there
and you're taking the time to spend a little time
with your insects, sweetie, just look out at what's flying
up behind you. Yeah, I mean, you're making these broadband
(14:05):
buzzing noises. Um, which is great, we understand, but yeah,
that is it's gonna get you noticed. You know, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're going to talk about babbling baby bats. All right,
We're back babbling baby bats like like that's exactly the
(14:30):
example that was drawn from this. This was this comes
from my study from the University of Laying in Nuremberg
in Germany, and they found it, just like human children,
bat pups may amuse themselves by essentially babbling nonsense. I
listened to an MP three of it, which I'm not
(14:50):
gonna play here because it really didn't mean anything to
me because it just sounded like bat squeaks. But to
to uh an informed ear who listens to a lot
of bat squeaks, you and tell that this is out
of keeping with with some of the more nuanced that
language that is making up their song, which is a
lot like babies babbling, because with the idea behind that
(15:11):
baby's babbling is that they're trying out language. They're trying
to piece syllables together. So same idea with these little
bat pups. And the reason they know that it's that
it's you know, babbling, is because it's out of social context.
So they're making this hissing, barking, gurgling or whatever sounds screeches,
and there's no reason for them to be making these strange,
(15:33):
sort of interlocking series of sounds other than trying out
their language. And this I thought was interesting is that
it has been found that bats and humans actually share
a common gene for communication. Yeah. The gene is called
fox P two and it's thought that this gene functions
in the sensory motor coordination of vocalizations, since speech and
(15:56):
echo location both involved producing um these complex vocal signals
via sophisticated coordination of the mouth in the face. So
when you look at a bat's face, you really can
sort of see that. And if you've ever seen them
pictures of bats screaming, you can see that they are
contorting their face. Yea, those kind of it's interesting to
know that we share that same gene, that this thought
(16:18):
that helps to coordinate this effort. Well, you know, that's
in our previous podcast on bats, we discussed you know
why in in many mythologies bats there there's something creepy
about them, there's something evil about them, or or just
something supernatural. And certainly if you look at a picture
of a screaming bat, I wonder to what extent the
the uncanny familiarity? Yeah, you know, to what extent that
plays into it, especially right because we talked about this
(16:40):
before in the last podcast. But you know, if you're
a fifteenth century seller and you see a vampire that
coming at you, and then you've witnessed it feeding from
reeral livestock, of course you would be horrified. And yes,
you might be able to see the familiar in the unfamiliar.
You know, I think the battling bat that would be
a great name for spook you pub you know, preferably
(17:02):
in a little of nowhere that are are our heroes
encounter in the dead of night. They're like, oh, look
the battling bats open, let's go in there. I feel
like you need to say it with an accent. Now, oh,
the bubbling bat. I don't know what accent that is? Irish?
That works. Here's another interesting bat song study, and this
one comes to us from the University of Texas at Austin.
(17:23):
So again with more of that Texas Germany economy here
in bat studies, and they found it like like a
diner ordering a dessert, they based solely on the US
and OZ of another customer, and that's the next table.
They they've got the soufle and they're like, oh, that's
the best thing. Yeah. So so you're like, oh, that
(17:43):
sounds like they're having a ball with that dish. All
of what they're having right. Well, you find a similar
thing with with frog eating bats that learn to eat,
there's this new and exciting prey by eavesdropping on their
neighbors as they eat. So so here we see it's
you role that they're there. They're hearing plays and their
ability to learn how to behave like, whereas as other animals,
(18:07):
you have a visible observation of what's going on. Oh this,
you know, the the other mormot here just you know,
wounded a scorpion and now he's going to teach me
how to play. Or my cat brings me a wounded
squirrel trying to teach me how to hunt. Maybe, but
but here it's it's it's a sonic world, so they're
they're listening, they're hearing the sounds of of what is
an appropriate meal and how to eat it well. And
(18:28):
it's such a high level of adaptivity too, because we
have known in the past that frogs, excuse me, bats
will pick up on certain frequencies of certain frogs and
distinguish which ones are poisonous in which ones are not,
and go after the ones that are not poisonous. But
this is an entirely different thing to to eavesdrop and
then say, Okay, that person didn't keel over from their dessert.
(18:51):
I think I'm gonna try it out. And then we've
also found in studies that that bats use their ultrasonic
echolocation calls to recognize their own species, which is really interesting.
Um which in a way it's pretty straightforward. I mean,
one species needs to know how to identify its own kind,
and they live in this world of sound, this world
of songs, so they need to be able to hear
(19:12):
the songs of their fellow bat. Yeah, which we discussed
in the last podcast is really important because they are
highly social and they tend to roost with groups of
forty so they would want to seek out people in
their group. Um, and you know, we're talking about people
in the group that they could either be related to
or they're just sort of you know, some potico with.
(19:36):
Because they actually have relationships with this group to the
point where they will go and get them food in
case they are sick and they cannot hunt for themselves. Yeah,
So that they need to know who's on their team,
who's who their their family is really in there, and
they do that through song, through sound. And then finally,
of course bats do have love songs, which of course
(19:56):
like the very white of ba songs. Right, I can
imagine a big Verry White type bat. It's kind of monstrous,
but but also yeah, like Verry White himself, you know,
he's a big man. He what he lacked in uh
in pure handsomeness he made up for and just voice
like hunting and just just sensual charm. So this is
(20:20):
a comes from study from the Department of Biology at
Texas and UM the University of Texas at Austin, where
the researchers spent three years analyzing thousands of Brazilian free
tailed bats and UH and the recordings of them to
understand what they were on about. And they determined that
the male bats are a very distinguishable syllable and UH
and choice of phrase that they use as love songs
(20:43):
to attract females and in some cases to tell the
other male bats to stand clear that blocking yeah yeah uh.
Let's see, didn't they have syllables that were combined in
these specific ways to create types of phrases UM and
I think they phrases were a chirp, a buzz or trill,
which is very interesting. Again, you don't think of bats
(21:06):
as having this ability, these syllables that they could um,
that they can actually use in their language. But I
think it's fascinating. And again this wasn't at Texas, ANA, right,
and I believe that there's a ton of study going
on of the bats at Congress Avenue Bridge and if
you've never seen any photos before. It's definitely worth googling.
(21:27):
We'll put up some phaties too. Yeah, possibly a YouTube
clip of that if I can find one. I'm I'm
sure I can. Yeah. But they're about a million bats
living under that bridge. It's fascinating to see them in caves,
but it's somehow to see them out in a man
made structure like that is. Uh, it's wonderfully grotesque because
they're just covering every inch of it. Wonderfully grotesque. I
(21:48):
think that's a good way to describe the bats in
some instances. I mean, there, there, there. They certainly can
be frightening and weird creatures. But as we've discussed here,
with their use of that location, their use of sound,
and they're they're really their lives in this world of song.
Uh that they really there is really a beauty to
(22:09):
them that that's easy to miss if you don't listen closer,
you know. Yeah. And I wanted to mention too that
there's a free online tool called i Bats i D
and this is actually a major boost helping to conserve bats,
particularly in Europe where there's been quite a decline. But um,
it helps to actually in bat populations figure out which
(22:33):
kind of bats are there, what species are there, and um,
what sort of numbers they're looking at. So if anybody's
interested in that, check it out. You know, there was
you familiar with the books Century by Corona and McCarthy
as one of his early books takes place in Knoxville.
Fabulous book. But there's a to a certain extent, it's
kind of a hasty story because you have a you
(22:55):
have the main character Suentery, and then there's this other
kind of bump in the Tom Solilary character, uh, the encounter.
And he's always he always has these schemes. Um Corrogate
is his name. And he hears that some of the
university is studying bats, and then they'll give him. It's
something like a nickel or I think at the amount
of minute. It's some piddling amount of money for every
dead bat that is brought in. Of course, the idea
(23:17):
here is the professors want people to find dead bats,
naturally occurring dead bats, so they can study them and
determine what killed them. So but Harrogate decides that this
is the way he's gonna make it big, is that
he devises a way to poison the bats so that
he can just get a big bushel load of them
that he thinks he's gonna fall into the university and
just take him just an equally large bushel of cash,
(23:41):
which of course doesn't work because they're an autopsy and
determined the bat diet because it consumes trychnine. See there,
there's there's nothing to gain out of that. And in
case anybody's thinking about that, if you happen to see
a dead bird or what appears to be a dead
excuse me, bat, do you not pick it up? It's
probably rabies, which causes paralley. This. Yeah, but at Horrogate
(24:03):
he did. He was gaming the science of bats, though,
because the way in the book, the way he figures
out how to to bait them, is that he puts
the poison inside a little piece of meat and then
he slings shots it up into the air at night
after all right, okay, so there you go just a little.
So now I want to sling shot some a piece
(24:24):
of ham into the air tonight. All right, Well, let's
call the robot over here and see if he has
any listener mail for us. All right, this one is
from Lizzie. Lizzie writes, in and says, Hello, Robert and Julie.
After listening to your podcast, I decided to share this
with you. And she's responding to our our sleep podcast
sleep No More, that we recently did, which deals with
(24:44):
sleep deprivation and sleep replacement drugs. She says, um, and
she sends us this website for http cohen slash slash
sleep y t I got me and she says. It's
a sleep calculator. It tells you when you should go
to bed in order to wake up at the end
of a sleep cycle. A full cycle sleep takes ninety
minutes the end. You should have five to six sleep
(25:06):
cycles in a night's rest. I was a little skeptical
at first when I heard about it and decided over
a month I would try it and record how I
felt in the mornings after I woke up, how many
times I hit snooze, my energy level throughout the day,
and my temperament in the mornings. I used it and
discovered that I feel best if I have had seven
point five hours or nine hours in nine hours and
(25:26):
sounds great. Um. I did discover if I slept eight
or eight point five hours, I was more likely to
hit snooze and record that I was incredibly grumpy. So
that's interesting. It's like you think there'd be a sweet
spot all in the middle there, but not religious. She
goes on, I even had a couple of days where
I stayed up very late and wound up wound up
(25:46):
only getting around three to four hours of sleep. When
I got three hours of sleep, I had more energy
for longer than when I had four hours of sleep.
But I noted I did turn to an outside source
of energy, caffeine on both of those days. Anyway, it
has changed my sleep habits, so I aim for seven
point five hours these days and not eight. I never
used to qualify myself as a morning for a person,
(26:08):
but I believe that is that that is changing. Now,
Thanks again for a great podcast. And that was sleep
y t I dot com Yes, s l e E
p y t I dot me okay. And then we
heard from Carlin in response to our City Preachers episode.
Carlin writs, and it is a great job. In this
episode two points in regards to a holiday for envy,
(26:30):
birthdays are a great example. A group of people gather
around the birthday person being showered with gifts while everyone
else watches an Indy. And this is related to a
mister man we read in that episode seven deadly sins
I'll match up with with traditional US holidays. Uh. And
then he makes a second point here, Carlin, does you
mentioned in in neighborhoods in bad repair, people would be
(26:53):
more likely to walk past someone in need. In the
cleaner ones, people take notice. This is similar to my
experience work in Christmas at Walmart. When I would start
my shift, I worked very hard to clean the toy department.
Once the aisles were cleaned, the parents would not let
their child be the first to make a mess. As
long as I did a little clean up throughout the shift,
I had a very easy time. So there you go
(27:15):
in action, which makes me think of those uh. I
assume they still have these restaurants where you were encouraged
to throw peanut husts on the floor. Have you dined
at these uh one time ago? Yeah, he made a
wonderful face at that gree Um. I always wonder it's
like that that sounds like a recipe for disaster, because
you're basically telling me the clientele the places a wreck,
(27:38):
throw food on the floor, we don't care. It's like
that's you're just opening the door then, because because the
whole idea is that if the place is already a wreck,
we were more inclined to let people abuse that space. Yeah,
but you don't see I mean, you just saw the
peanut shells, right, you just saw the casings. You didn't
see like beer cans and like old shoes, And so
(27:59):
maybe it's long as your uniform and just peo. I
think it's the psychological thing where it's like, you know what,
you are allowed to do this one thing that your
mother told you never to do, which is to to
throw this peanut shell down. And so people are they
feel like they're getting away with something. It's quite exciting.
All right. Well, here's one last piece of listener mail,
and this is from Stevie. Stevie writes in UM pretty
(28:20):
much about the same topic. Here, says, I was just
listening to your listener mail on the last podcast you did,
and the person writing in was connecting the seven Deadly
since to holidays. I can see how those those connections
can be made. I was also thinking about the question
the listener post about envy and what holiday that would be?
What about New Year's You both were talking about envy
being the sin of wanting to obtain and grasping for
(28:42):
something you don't have. Isn't that what New Year's resolutions are,
setting a resolution for yourself to do something or obtain
something you do not have. Plus it can lead to
envy because by the end of the first month, most
people end up breaking their resolutions and giving up on them,
while envying the results of those who have stuck with
their resolutions. Uh, just a thought. I love listening to
your podcast, and I've learned so much in such a
(29:04):
short period of time. Keep the knowledge and insight coming, guys. Well,
she makes an interesting case for for New Year's an energy.
I don't. I don't know, it's it's worth pondering. I'm not.
I'm not sure. I mean, to a certain extent, I
can see there's a certain grasping and saying I will
I will do this, I will be this. But it's
a so, it's it's not completely cut and dry there so,
(29:27):
And I think it depends on what your list is,
you know, if it's like I want one million dollars
or lollipops, yeah, or how you're framing it, like, for instance,
if your whole thing is my resolution for the next
year is I'm going to go to yoga because I
want to look how Jill looks yoga. But yeah, because
I want yoga, but like Jill, whoever Chill is, and
(29:49):
then um clearly has yoga but exactly. But but then
if you're getting into it, like I want to do
yoga because I want to cultivate, cultivated, calmer outlook on life,
where I want to have better flexibility, you know it.
I guess it comes down to just how you're viewing
your goals. That's all right, all right, So if you
(30:12):
would like to chime in, perhaps you have some thoughts
on the Seven Deadly Sins and holidays, uh, Perhaps you
have some thoughts on echolocation and bats, this world of
song that they sing all around them. Perhaps you have
some thoughts on the Descent movie that I mentioned or
it's awful sequel. Then you can write into us. You
can find us on Tumblr and Facebook, where we are
(30:34):
stuff to blow your mind. And if you find us
on Twitter, you will find us under the handle blow
the Mind. And you can also send us an email
at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works. Dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and we just
recorded a fairly long episode about bats called The Wild
World of Bats. And hopefully you've you've listened to that
one before you listen to this one. Not that you
(00:26):
have to, but I think that's a preferred listening order.
But but but in that podcast, we talked about a
lot about the ways of bats, in the way that
the ways that they've come to own the night, um,
how they live in this this different realm of the
senses um. And we also mentioned a philosophical paper by
one Thomas Nagle, and we read a quote from that.
(00:47):
But his whole point is that we as humans have
are perhaps incapable of understanding the viewpoints of other species,
be it be at a dog, a cat, a bat,
or you know, an alien being of some sort on
another planet. We just can't we can't really compare ourselves
in their mind because we're not privy to um all
(01:08):
the experiences that make them what they are. And uh,
and with the bat, we see that, especially in its
echolocation and its use of song. Basically it's use of song,
it's use of sound to see the world around it
and experience it and interact with it. Yeah, because remember
this is really the aspect of bats that make that
successful really if you look at it. Of course the
(01:30):
flying is important, but the ability to have this sort
of song um is what makes this UH as what
your Dr. George Pollock says, a rich sensory exotica. And
I love that because we're really going to try to
delve into that today, like what does it mean to
be a creature who depends on echolocation and how does
it change your understanding of the physical world. So, just
(01:53):
to to briefly mention echolocation again, I think radar thinks sonar.
The bat sends out a signal, a sound signal goes
out and waves, it hits something, it bounces back, and
there's something maybe the wall of a canyon, which we
can relate to in an echo. If we're standing in
a canyon, we we hear our sound um flow out
(02:14):
from us and return to us. But then with the bat,
we're also talking about UH the ability to balance off
of very small objects, moving objects such as a moth
moving around in the night that would make a tasty,
tasty snack, as well as the movements of other creatures
and other things in the night. UM a lot of
In most cases, the echolocation sound is an extremely high
(02:35):
pitched noise, so high that it's beyond human hearing. But
the their vocal communication is is again, it is, it is.
It's rich. It's not just a bat. Squawk at the
squawk at that, and squawk at this other thing and
see what happens. You see a vast array of squeaks
and squawks and babbles. Uh. In many cases, we're talking
(02:55):
about elaborate songs that they're basically there. To get a
little ideic about it, they're they're sort of singing the
world around them into existence. Yeah, and it is finally
tuned so they can of course adjust the pitch, the frequency,
all different aspects of of of what they're emitting in
order to get the right kind of data back that
they want. And also when you think about this, UM,
(03:17):
you know the sort of data that it's hitting Like
a moth, it's not just a moth, it's every single
thing that is in that vicinity that's coming back that
it now has to make sense of. Um. They are
not only detecting, detecting and hunting objects, but they are
forming three dimensional images of these objects on the basis
of sound. Like it's all coming together in their mind
(03:38):
in a way that we really can't quite fathom. Yeah. So,
so they know where they are in space, they know
the verticality of this object or thing, they know the distance,
and they can see, really they can see with their
ears flying at speeds of forty miles an hour while
doing this, And I mean, I love the idea that
that they that it even has a sense of amarants
(04:00):
and dax. That's just amazing to even fine wrap your
head around. Um. Now, it's worth noting that despite the
saying blind is a bat, bats are not blind. Most
bats have sides. Sometimes the side is a little uh
certainly less developed of their senses. But but in something
(04:21):
in case, they have very acute eyesight. So it's not
that they're hearing and singing and not seeing. They're seeing
as well. But but it's just part of the the
overall sense experience. And this is also part of the
adaptation becoming a nocturnal creature. Okay, so bats are using
biosnar to get information about their target, the distance, the
(04:42):
direction in the nature. Um. But when echo locating bats
approach a target, they move in actually three phases. The
first is a search phase, and it's a call with
constant features and long intervals between the calls, and the
second is an approach phase. And the last phase as
is called a feeding buzz. And during a feeding buzz
(05:02):
that that shortens the duration of its calls and the
intervals between them. UM. So what you'll see is that
these echolocation calls of bats have two major patterns. And
then the first pattern is called a high duty cycle,
in which that separate the pulse and the echo and frequency.
And these calls are long and they're separated by short
(05:24):
periods of silence and dominated by a single frequency. And
the second pattern is called a low duty cycle, and
that separate the pulse and the echo and time, and
these calls are short and separated by long periods of
silence and are not dominated by a single frequency. So
already you can see there's a ton of stuff going
on here and what seems to be just a simple,
(05:46):
you know, immediate emitting of sound. There's some cool research
that came out of a University of Maryland's bat lap
and I love that they have a battle. Um, tell
me this real quick. In researching this, do you think
there were were you finding more in more studies about
bats that were conducted by German scientists or German labs. Yeah,
there was a couple of dominant ones. Yeah, so I
(06:08):
wasn't sure. Am I just noticing it more when Germans
are studying bats or are Germans actually studying back? Well?
That and I noticed in Austen too, there's quite a
few researchers of course they have a huge bat public.
Yeah okay, sorry, So anyway back the undensity of Maryland's
bat lab, they found the bats they were studying that
they were they were using their their echolocation uh to
(06:30):
to find a target, obviously, but they were not aiming
their guiding waves directly at the target. Instead, they were
alternately pointing the sound beam to either side of the target,
which the researchers argue is a strategy that optimized with
the bat's ability to pinpoint the location of a target,
but also makes it hard for them to detect a
target in the first place. Okay, so on either side
(06:51):
of the target, that's where they tried to put their focus. Yeah,
almost kind of like like hurting an animal, like I'm
I'm looking here, I'm looking where You're not to know
where you are? But isn't there something about chopping wood,
like you don't aim for the center or there's some
sort of zen. Yeah, but then they also have a
zen neural response to Bats can separate the massive amount
(07:13):
of echoes returning from their centar pulses by distinguishing changes
in amplitude. This is the intensity of the sound between
different parts of each echo within one point five decibels
to decide whether the object is a target or just
background clutter. And the minute change in amplitude is enough
to cause a delay in the bat's neural response to
(07:36):
an echo, letting that bat know what's clutter and what's
the target. Again, imagine that these um, these creatures are
moving through space at forty miles per hour. They're doing
all of this as they're approaching the target, and as
they continue to to hone in on it, they still
are getting data and adjusting accordingly. Wow. Yeah, they're incredible creatures.
(07:56):
Have you have you seen a horror movie called The Descent?
I have not? Okay, well The Descent. First of all,
if you like horror, movies and you haven't seen The Descent,
you should check it out because, in my opinion, one
of one of, if not the best horror films to
come out in recent decades. But it deals with cave explorers,
amateur splunkers I guess, who are going down into an
(08:17):
unexplored cave and there they encounter this uh ghoulish humanoid
species that you get the impression that is that has
evolved from humans that that took to the caves in
some ancient time. So now they're there are these pale,
ghastly blind humanoid creatures that to use echolocation to find
(08:39):
prey and to determine where they are in this dark,
underground environment. So in a sense, it's kind of the
film's kind of an attempt to uh to understand the
mind of the bat and understand the sense room of
the bat, because you have these scenes, these frightening scenes
of these creatures that will be very near the their
target that they can't see them, so they'll they'll be
screeching and hollering in these awful tone in order to
(09:00):
see the environment around them. That is horrifying. Yeah, but
a location um. One of the cool things about that
Zen neural response. Uh. And I was just thinking about
that too. Even within that nightmare scenario, you do have
that so much chaos, so much clutter going on, And
what researchers are saying is that that is that zen
(09:22):
navigation ability. It's almost like bats have a main screen
that keeps locked on its target and is trying to
filter all the neural information, the neural response to the echoes,
and then it's almost like it has a secondary screen
that keeps note of all the surrounding stuff behind that.
It's fascinating because it's it's really doing this the bat brain,
(09:42):
and this is doing the same thing the human brain
does because and this is something that really becomes obvious
in artificial intelligence when we're trying to develop um a
computer developer robot that can navigate a human environment and
interact with humans and not accidentally decapitate them as something
because the human environments, say a cocktail party, but that's
(10:03):
an example that's come up in some of these artificial
intelligence papers. Imagine a cocktail party, all of the chaos
that's going on around you, you know, just if you
go to something some sort of social engagement this uh,
this week, do think about this like they're the conversation.
There's a conversation you're involved in. There's maybe the conversation
that you're eavesdropping on. They are the conversations you're not
(10:24):
privy to. There there's the the movement of people, the
movement of food. There's music, there might be something on
a TV in the background. The weather might be doing
something out the window. There are pets moving around. It's
chaos and our but our brain has to decide what
is important, what is worth focusing on, what is the
what is the story, what is the path through this chaos?
And it has to to make a small slice of
(10:47):
order out of it. So that's what goes on in
our brain, and that's what's going on with the bat brain,
only with some different pieces and flying through the air
at forty right, So it really isn't then the navigation
so that you don't fixate on the wrong thing. Um,
this was astounding too. This was some information that you
sent me about the sound of our breathing being something
(11:10):
that bats can actually pick up on and and capitalize on.
And of course we're talking about vampire bats here, because
most bats really don't care what humans are up to,
certainly on a on a breath level. But the vampire
bat uh he or she is interested because that's a
meal that's as good as a cow right there. Blood
taste good. And if it can land near that human
(11:32):
and then crawl up to it and start to open
a little cut in the next day and start laughing away,
then all the better. And yeah, they've they've connected studies.
They found that they can they can recognize pray by
the sound of its breathing, and really can can recognize
human human breathing the sound of human breathing better than
humans can. Yeah, didn't they didn't uh an experiment where
(11:55):
they had some I believe it was cow's blood was
the reward, and they had some um film clips of
humans breathing and so when they match it up, they
got the reward. And then they pair them with the
the humans who were supposed to detect the breath patterns,
and humans were kind of awful at it in comparison.
(12:15):
That's just not something we're programmed for. No, no, But
it's a it's a little bit freaky, I guess, because
you're thinking about the possibility of a vampire about actually
stalking you, and this is what it's using it for right. Um,
But of course vampire abouts mainly feed on cattle, so
we don't have to be too worried about it. But
of course most bats aren't concerned with human blood. They're
(12:37):
concerned with insects. And UH found this really interesting. There
was a study from the Max Plank Institute and they
found that bats can cut in on the sound of
insect coupling. So in the same way that say, adjacent
vorhees cannot resist killing teenagers while they're having sex. Uh,
(12:58):
these bats can don't resist the opportunity of two insects
having sex. Because they're they're occupied, and they're making a
lot more noise than usual. It's the perfect time to
zoom in and eat them. It really is a slash
or film right because flies right, and this is the
example that was given, is that flies normally at night
aren't very active, so they wouldn't put put off too
(13:21):
many sound waves. But yes, when they're doing the deed,
that is when they are um usually going to be
eaten by a bat. So what I think is fascinating
about that is it always boils down to in nature
that that that if you're going to copulate, it can
come at really high stakes, you know. I mean, because
you take one second out to do the deed, and
(13:43):
all of a sudden you become someone's lunch or dinner.
And certainly you have you have animals that take far
less time with the act than others. I mean, that's
a whole podcast in and of itself. But but yeah,
if you're if you're an insect and you're out there
and you're taking the time to spend a little time
with your insects, sweetie, just look out at what's flying
up behind you. Yeah, I mean, you're making these broadband
(14:05):
buzzing noises. Um, which is great, we understand, but yeah,
that is it's gonna get you noticed. You know, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're going to talk about babbling baby bats. All right,
We're back babbling baby bats like like that's exactly the
(14:30):
example that was drawn from this. This was this comes
from my study from the University of Laying in Nuremberg
in Germany, and they found it, just like human children,
bat pups may amuse themselves by essentially babbling nonsense. I
listened to an MP three of it, which I'm not
(14:50):
gonna play here because it really didn't mean anything to
me because it just sounded like bat squeaks. But to
to uh an informed ear who listens to a lot
of bat squeaks, you and tell that this is out
of keeping with with some of the more nuanced that
language that is making up their song, which is a
lot like babies babbling, because with the idea behind that
(15:11):
baby's babbling is that they're trying out language. They're trying
to piece syllables together. So same idea with these little
bat pups. And the reason they know that it's that
it's you know, babbling, is because it's out of social context.
So they're making this hissing, barking, gurgling or whatever sounds screeches,
and there's no reason for them to be making these strange,
(15:33):
sort of interlocking series of sounds other than trying out
their language. And this I thought was interesting is that
it has been found that bats and humans actually share
a common gene for communication. Yeah. The gene is called
fox P two and it's thought that this gene functions
in the sensory motor coordination of vocalizations, since speech and
(15:56):
echo location both involved producing um these complex vocal signals
via sophisticated coordination of the mouth in the face. So
when you look at a bat's face, you really can
sort of see that. And if you've ever seen them
pictures of bats screaming, you can see that they are
contorting their face. Yea, those kind of it's interesting to
know that we share that same gene, that this thought
(16:18):
that helps to coordinate this effort. Well, you know, that's
in our previous podcast on bats, we discussed you know
why in in many mythologies bats there there's something creepy
about them, there's something evil about them, or or just
something supernatural. And certainly if you look at a picture
of a screaming bat, I wonder to what extent the
the uncanny familiarity? Yeah, you know, to what extent that
plays into it, especially right because we talked about this
(16:40):
before in the last podcast. But you know, if you're
a fifteenth century seller and you see a vampire that
coming at you, and then you've witnessed it feeding from
reeral livestock, of course you would be horrified. And yes,
you might be able to see the familiar in the unfamiliar.
You know, I think the battling bat that would be
a great name for spook you pub you know, preferably
(17:02):
in a little of nowhere that are are our heroes
encounter in the dead of night. They're like, oh, look
the battling bats open, let's go in there. I feel
like you need to say it with an accent. Now, oh,
the bubbling bat. I don't know what accent that is? Irish?
That works. Here's another interesting bat song study, and this
one comes to us from the University of Texas at Austin.
(17:23):
So again with more of that Texas Germany economy here
in bat studies, and they found it like like a
diner ordering a dessert, they based solely on the US
and OZ of another customer, and that's the next table.
They they've got the soufle and they're like, oh, that's
the best thing. Yeah. So so you're like, oh, that
(17:43):
sounds like they're having a ball with that dish. All
of what they're having right. Well, you find a similar
thing with with frog eating bats that learn to eat,
there's this new and exciting prey by eavesdropping on their
neighbors as they eat. So so here we see it's
you role that they're there. They're hearing plays and their
ability to learn how to behave like, whereas as other animals,
(18:07):
you have a visible observation of what's going on. Oh this,
you know, the the other mormot here just you know,
wounded a scorpion and now he's going to teach me
how to play. Or my cat brings me a wounded
squirrel trying to teach me how to hunt. Maybe, but
but here it's it's it's a sonic world, so they're
they're listening, they're hearing the sounds of of what is
an appropriate meal and how to eat it well. And
(18:28):
it's such a high level of adaptivity too, because we
have known in the past that frogs, excuse me, bats
will pick up on certain frequencies of certain frogs and
distinguish which ones are poisonous in which ones are not,
and go after the ones that are not poisonous. But
this is an entirely different thing to to eavesdrop and
then say, Okay, that person didn't keel over from their dessert.
(18:51):
I think I'm gonna try it out. And then we've
also found in studies that that bats use their ultrasonic
echolocation calls to recognize their own species, which is really interesting.
Um which in a way it's pretty straightforward. I mean,
one species needs to know how to identify its own kind,
and they live in this world of sound, this world
of songs, so they need to be able to hear
(19:12):
the songs of their fellow bat. Yeah, which we discussed
in the last podcast is really important because they are
highly social and they tend to roost with groups of
forty so they would want to seek out people in
their group. Um, and you know, we're talking about people
in the group that they could either be related to
or they're just sort of you know, some potico with.
(19:36):
Because they actually have relationships with this group to the
point where they will go and get them food in
case they are sick and they cannot hunt for themselves. Yeah,
So that they need to know who's on their team,
who's who their their family is really in there, and
they do that through song, through sound. And then finally,
of course bats do have love songs, which of course
(19:56):
like the very white of ba songs. Right, I can
imagine a big Verry White type bat. It's kind of monstrous,
but but also yeah, like Verry White himself, you know,
he's a big man. He what he lacked in uh
in pure handsomeness he made up for and just voice
like hunting and just just sensual charm. So this is
(20:20):
a comes from study from the Department of Biology at
Texas and UM the University of Texas at Austin, where
the researchers spent three years analyzing thousands of Brazilian free
tailed bats and UH and the recordings of them to
understand what they were on about. And they determined that
the male bats are a very distinguishable syllable and UH
and choice of phrase that they use as love songs
(20:43):
to attract females and in some cases to tell the
other male bats to stand clear that blocking yeah yeah uh.
Let's see, didn't they have syllables that were combined in
these specific ways to create types of phrases UM and
I think they phrases were a chirp, a buzz or trill,
which is very interesting. Again, you don't think of bats
(21:06):
as having this ability, these syllables that they could um,
that they can actually use in their language. But I
think it's fascinating. And again this wasn't at Texas, ANA, right,
and I believe that there's a ton of study going
on of the bats at Congress Avenue Bridge and if
you've never seen any photos before. It's definitely worth googling.
(21:27):
We'll put up some phaties too. Yeah, possibly a YouTube
clip of that if I can find one. I'm I'm
sure I can. Yeah. But they're about a million bats
living under that bridge. It's fascinating to see them in caves,
but it's somehow to see them out in a man
made structure like that is. Uh, it's wonderfully grotesque because
they're just covering every inch of it. Wonderfully grotesque. I
(21:48):
think that's a good way to describe the bats in
some instances. I mean, there, there, there. They certainly can
be frightening and weird creatures. But as we've discussed here,
with their use of that location, their use of sound,
and they're they're really their lives in this world of song.
Uh that they really there is really a beauty to
(22:09):
them that that's easy to miss if you don't listen closer,
you know. Yeah. And I wanted to mention too that
there's a free online tool called i Bats i D
and this is actually a major boost helping to conserve bats,
particularly in Europe where there's been quite a decline. But um,
it helps to actually in bat populations figure out which
(22:33):
kind of bats are there, what species are there, and um,
what sort of numbers they're looking at. So if anybody's
interested in that, check it out. You know, there was
you familiar with the books Century by Corona and McCarthy
as one of his early books takes place in Knoxville.
Fabulous book. But there's a to a certain extent, it's
kind of a hasty story because you have a you
(22:55):
have the main character Suentery, and then there's this other
kind of bump in the Tom Solilary character, uh, the encounter.
And he's always he always has these schemes. Um Corrogate
is his name. And he hears that some of the
university is studying bats, and then they'll give him. It's
something like a nickel or I think at the amount
of minute. It's some piddling amount of money for every
dead bat that is brought in. Of course, the idea
(23:17):
here is the professors want people to find dead bats,
naturally occurring dead bats, so they can study them and
determine what killed them. So but Harrogate decides that this
is the way he's gonna make it big, is that
he devises a way to poison the bats so that
he can just get a big bushel load of them
that he thinks he's gonna fall into the university and
just take him just an equally large bushel of cash,
(23:41):
which of course doesn't work because they're an autopsy and
determined the bat diet because it consumes trychnine. See there,
there's there's nothing to gain out of that. And in
case anybody's thinking about that, if you happen to see
a dead bird or what appears to be a dead
excuse me, bat, do you not pick it up? It's
probably rabies, which causes paralley. This. Yeah, but at Horrogate
(24:03):
he did. He was gaming the science of bats, though,
because the way in the book, the way he figures
out how to to bait them, is that he puts
the poison inside a little piece of meat and then
he slings shots it up into the air at night
after all right, okay, so there you go just a little.
So now I want to sling shot some a piece
(24:24):
of ham into the air tonight. All right, Well, let's
call the robot over here and see if he has
any listener mail for us. All right, this one is
from Lizzie. Lizzie writes, in and says, Hello, Robert and Julie.
After listening to your podcast, I decided to share this
with you. And she's responding to our our sleep podcast
sleep No More, that we recently did, which deals with
(24:44):
sleep deprivation and sleep replacement drugs. She says, um, and
she sends us this website for http cohen slash slash
sleep y t I got me and she says. It's
a sleep calculator. It tells you when you should go
to bed in order to wake up at the end
of a sleep cycle. A full cycle sleep takes ninety
minutes the end. You should have five to six sleep
(25:06):
cycles in a night's rest. I was a little skeptical
at first when I heard about it and decided over
a month I would try it and record how I
felt in the mornings after I woke up, how many
times I hit snooze, my energy level throughout the day,
and my temperament in the mornings. I used it and
discovered that I feel best if I have had seven
point five hours or nine hours in nine hours and
(25:26):
sounds great. Um. I did discover if I slept eight
or eight point five hours, I was more likely to
hit snooze and record that I was incredibly grumpy. So
that's interesting. It's like you think there'd be a sweet
spot all in the middle there, but not religious. She
goes on, I even had a couple of days where
I stayed up very late and wound up wound up
(25:46):
only getting around three to four hours of sleep. When
I got three hours of sleep, I had more energy
for longer than when I had four hours of sleep.
But I noted I did turn to an outside source
of energy, caffeine on both of those days. Anyway, it
has changed my sleep habits, so I aim for seven
point five hours these days and not eight. I never
used to qualify myself as a morning for a person,
(26:08):
but I believe that is that that is changing. Now,
Thanks again for a great podcast. And that was sleep
y t I dot com Yes, s l e E
p y t I dot me okay. And then we
heard from Carlin in response to our City Preachers episode.
Carlin writs, and it is a great job. In this
episode two points in regards to a holiday for envy,
(26:30):
birthdays are a great example. A group of people gather
around the birthday person being showered with gifts while everyone
else watches an Indy. And this is related to a
mister man we read in that episode seven deadly sins
I'll match up with with traditional US holidays. Uh. And
then he makes a second point here, Carlin, does you
mentioned in in neighborhoods in bad repair, people would be
(26:53):
more likely to walk past someone in need. In the
cleaner ones, people take notice. This is similar to my
experience work in Christmas at Walmart. When I would start
my shift, I worked very hard to clean the toy department.
Once the aisles were cleaned, the parents would not let
their child be the first to make a mess. As
long as I did a little clean up throughout the shift,
I had a very easy time. So there you go
(27:15):
in action, which makes me think of those uh. I
assume they still have these restaurants where you were encouraged
to throw peanut husts on the floor. Have you dined
at these uh one time ago? Yeah, he made a
wonderful face at that gree Um. I always wonder it's
like that that sounds like a recipe for disaster, because
you're basically telling me the clientele the places a wreck,
(27:38):
throw food on the floor, we don't care. It's like
that's you're just opening the door then, because because the
whole idea is that if the place is already a wreck,
we were more inclined to let people abuse that space. Yeah,
but you don't see I mean, you just saw the
peanut shells, right, you just saw the casings. You didn't
see like beer cans and like old shoes, And so
(27:59):
maybe it's long as your uniform and just peo. I
think it's the psychological thing where it's like, you know what,
you are allowed to do this one thing that your
mother told you never to do, which is to to
throw this peanut shell down. And so people are they
feel like they're getting away with something. It's quite exciting.
All right. Well, here's one last piece of listener mail,
and this is from Stevie. Stevie writes in UM pretty
(28:20):
much about the same topic. Here, says, I was just
listening to your listener mail on the last podcast you did,
and the person writing in was connecting the seven Deadly
since to holidays. I can see how those those connections
can be made. I was also thinking about the question
the listener post about envy and what holiday that would be?
What about New Year's You both were talking about envy
being the sin of wanting to obtain and grasping for
(28:42):
something you don't have. Isn't that what New Year's resolutions are,
setting a resolution for yourself to do something or obtain
something you do not have. Plus it can lead to
envy because by the end of the first month, most
people end up breaking their resolutions and giving up on them,
while envying the results of those who have stuck with
their resolutions. Uh, just a thought. I love listening to
your podcast, and I've learned so much in such a
(29:04):
short period of time. Keep the knowledge and insight coming, guys. Well,
she makes an interesting case for for New Year's an energy.
I don't. I don't know, it's it's worth pondering. I'm not.
I'm not sure. I mean, to a certain extent, I
can see there's a certain grasping and saying I will
I will do this, I will be this. But it's
a so, it's it's not completely cut and dry there so,
(29:27):
And I think it depends on what your list is,
you know, if it's like I want one million dollars
or lollipops, yeah, or how you're framing it, like, for instance,
if your whole thing is my resolution for the next
year is I'm going to go to yoga because I
want to look how Jill looks yoga. But yeah, because
I want yoga, but like Jill, whoever Chill is, and
(29:49):
then um clearly has yoga but exactly. But but then
if you're getting into it, like I want to do
yoga because I want to cultivate, cultivated, calmer outlook on life,
where I want to have better flexibility, you know it.
I guess it comes down to just how you're viewing
your goals. That's all right, all right, So if you
(30:12):
would like to chime in, perhaps you have some thoughts
on the Seven Deadly Sins and holidays, uh, Perhaps you
have some thoughts on echolocation and bats, this world of
song that they sing all around them. Perhaps you have
some thoughts on the Descent movie that I mentioned or
it's awful sequel. Then you can write into us. You
can find us on Tumblr and Facebook, where we are
(30:34):
stuff to blow your mind. And if you find us
on Twitter, you will find us under the handle blow
the Mind. And you can also send us an email
at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
stuff works. Dot com
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