You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

It was one o'clock in the morning, and Silita Guy was sitting at a picnic table in High Park in Toronto.

A police officer wanted to know what she was doing, which wasn't going to be easy to explain.

And as he's, you know, interrogating me and my field partner asking us these questions,

you know, my shirt starts to move because I had this colony of, you know, 25 or so bats down there.

Scylida is an urban ecologist, someone who studies how plants and animals act in cities. For Scylita,

that means catching bats, putting little radio collars on their backs to track them,

and then on cold nights, warming them back up so they can fly away.

Hence, the shirt of writhing bats.

Finally, I guess he decided he wanted to address the elephant in the proverbial room,

which is, you know, ma'am, your shirt is moving. To which point I said, you know, yes, officer, I have 25 bats down there. They're warming back up. They're getting ready to fly. And he was like, okay, that's it. I've had enough. I'm, I'm going to leave. This is this too much for me. And did he walk away or what happens after that? He backed away slowly, and then I think once he felt he was

at a safe distance, he like spun around and like sped walk back to his cruiser. It was a very

interesting night. And it was one of many nights Silita spent chasing bats to find out where they

spent their time, which she thought would be at the park.

Instead, what we found were bats preferred or were instead living in people's homes or, you know, on large trees on their property.

So kind of unexpected.

Saalida says there's a hidden world of urban ecology, an entire ecosystem of animals that live in the city's humans build.

You know, around the world, there are a lot of species who are doing great in city landscapes.

They actually do better in our cities than they do outside.

So today on the show, we talk to Silita about the animals that love city life and why we need to understand how nature uses cities so we can design them to be better for all of us.

I'm Lauren Summer and you're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Silita Guy loves bats.

So the cutest bat, I think, is still got to be the Honduran white bat.

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