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Science Friday

Coronavirus Fact-Check, Poetry of Science, Social Bats. March 20, 2020, Part 2

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Natural Sciences

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2020

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As new cases of coronavirus pop up across the United States, and as millions of people must self-isolate from family and friends at home, one place many are turning to for comfort and information is their news feed. But our regular media diet of politics, sports, and entertainment has been replaced by 24/7 coverage of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Nearly every outlet is covering the pandemic in some way—celebrities live streaming their self-quarantine, restaurants rolling out new health practices and food delivery options, educators and parents finding ways to teach kids at home. There’s an overwhelming number of ways the media has covered the virus. But on top of that, there’s also blatant misinformation about the virus distracting us from the useful facts. It’s all appearing in one big blur on Facebook or Twitter feeds. And it doesn’t help that nearly every few hours we’re getting important, and often urgent, updates to the evolving story. This week, guest host John Dankosky speaks with two scientists who can help fact-check your news feed. Angela Rasmussen, assistant research scientist and virologist at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunology at the Yale University School of Medicine give us a clearer picture of the coronavirus news this week. Poet Jane Hirshfield calls these “unaccountable” times. Crises in the biosphere—climate change, extinctions—collide with crises in human life. And in her new book Ledger she says she has tried to do the accounting of where we, human beings, are as a result. As a poet whose work touches on the Hubble telescope, the proteins of itch, and the silencing of climate researchers, Hirshfield talks with John Dankosky about the particular observational capacity of language, and why scientists and poets can share similar awe. Hirshfield is also the founder of Poets for Science, which continues a project to create a global community poem started after 2017’s March for Science. “When we introduced them in isolated pairs they formed relationships much faster, like college students in a dorm room,” Carter said to Science Friday earlier this week. “And when we introduced a bat into a group of three, that was faster than when we just put two larger groups together.” Carter has also studied how illness changes social relationships within a vampire bat roost. He found that if a baby bat gets sick, for instance, the mom won’t stop grooming or sharing food with their offspring. But that same bat will stop participating in some social behavior with a close roost-mate that isn’t family. Carter joins Science Friday guest host John Dankosky to talk about researching vampire bats, and what their response to illness tells us about our own time social distancing during the coronavirus outbreak. See more photos and video of social bat behavior below.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski, sitting in for Ira Flato, and I just want to note here,

0:07.1

Ira is fine. He's just spending this week at home, like most of you. He had planned to go to

0:12.5

spring training to see some baseball, and as they used to say about the Brooklyn Dodgers,

0:16.1

you're going to have to wait until next year. But you will not have to wait for Ira that long.

0:20.6

He's going to be back next week. Later this will not have to wait for Ira that long. He's going to be back

0:21.2

next week. Later this hour, our experts will weigh in on this week's coronavirus news stories,

0:26.8

plus a little science poetry to cleanse the palate. But first, since we're missing a lot of social

0:32.0

contact these days, let's talk about what we've learned from other social mammals. Take vampire bats,

0:37.3

for instance. Sometimes they get

0:38.8

along and sometimes they fight. When bats have strong bonds, they'll do things like groom each

0:44.3

other and share food by regurgitating blood into each other's mouths, which sounds gross unless

0:50.3

you're a bat. But when a vampire bat gets sick, it changes the way other bats interact with

0:55.4

them. In fact, the way they act is similar in some ways to how humans have reacted to COVID-19.

1:01.9

Jerry Carter is an assistant professor and behavioral ecologist at Ohio State University.

1:07.2

Jerry, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for being here.

1:10.2

Hi, yeah, thanks for inviting me.

1:12.1

So before we get started on connections to coronavirus, maybe you can give us an idea of just how social vampire bats are.

1:20.7

Yeah, so they have this food sharing behavior, which seems to be something that is an extension of parental care.

1:27.3

So all the mothers regurgitate food, blood, to their offspring. which seems to be something that is an extension of parental care.

1:31.7

So all the mothers regurgitate food, blood, to their offspring,

1:34.7

but they also do this for other adults, including unrelated adults.

1:42.7

When you study these vampire bats, you're just studying the females, right?

...

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