I'm Flor Lichtenen, and you are listening to Science Friday.

Today in the show, a pair of married scientists are on a mission.

Save bats in their homeland, Nigeria.

We are raising basically just raising an army of bat conservationism.

Nigeria is home to 100 known species of bats.

That's about a third of all of Africa's bat species.

But when my next two guests met, before they were collaborators, before they were married,

not so much was known about the flying furry mammals of the region.

Dr. Iro-Tanchi is an ecologist at the University of Washington, and Dr. Beneth Obite is a conservation

ecologist at Texas Tech University. Irro, Ben, welcome to Science Friday.

Thanks, Flora. It's very nice to be here. Thank you, Flora.

Thank you for having us.

Aurora, why bats?

Are they a lifelong love for you?

Absolutely.

The question why bats has, you know, a few answers for me.

Everything from, you know, the adventure that comes with just being out in the field studying bats,

because you've got to go to caves, forest canopies, you know, and all that.

But also, it was the point, I feel like bats kind of rescued my career. I was at the point where I started asking questions about whether I could really do biology in a really

exciting way. And then I heard about someone climbing into the forest canopy and studying bats.

I was like, yeah, this is it. That just dead drop. There is no question. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

What do you mean it rescued your career? You weren't sure if you could do biology in a fun,

...