Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 123 of Just the Zoo of Us.

On this week's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with a guest who brings tireless

passion and enthusiasm for bats that I believe you will find wearing off on you before this

episode is over. If you've ever been curious about vampire folklore, the intricacies of echolocation,

nocturnal arms races, or bat friendships, this episode's got a little bit of everything,

so settle in and enjoy. Just the Zoo of Us presents Vampire Bats with Nate Marshall.

Music Bats with Nate Marshall. Hey everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford. I'm here again with just the zoo of us. This is, as always, your favorite animal review podcast,

and I'm excited this week because we're talking to a friend of ours. This is Nate Marshall

from the Give Bats a Break, Bat Advocacy, Social Media Campaign all over the place. Say hi, Nate. Hi, everyone. So we have sort of been buddies

for a while on Twitter and such. So it's really nice to actually get to talk to you. But our friends

listening might not know who you are just quite yet. Can you introduce yourself a little bit for

our friends listening? Yeah, of course. So I am, as Ellen said, Nate Marshall.

I have a Twitter account called Give Bats a break. I have a podcast called Give Bats a podcast.

And I am all bats all the time, baby. The bat guy. I'm the bat guy. You know, it's funny. I've

mentioned this elsewhere, but I always thought that if I went back to like a high school reunion, that I'd go back as Pastor Nate or something like that. And now if I ever go back, it's going to be as Nate the bat guy, which would probably come out of left field for a lot of people. But it wouldn't come out of left field for me, because I've known my whole life how much I've enjoyed these animals. That's interesting.

Is the bat passion? Is that just like a more recent development, or just something that you've

gotten more vocal about? My affection for bats roosted and hibernated for a very long time. So I loved bats as a kid. Every year

when teachers would ask, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? It was bat scientist.

That was my pat answer. And I did. I loved them. I have this project that I did at one point,

and I've got a picture of it. The opening line was in

quotes, and it was, hey, you over there, you want to know a lot about bats? And then the person

responds, yeah. And then I proceed in this project to just like list off all these bat facts.

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