The Baffled Bat

Curious Cases

BBC

Science

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2017

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Why don't thousands of bats in a cave get confused? How do they differentiate their own location echoes from those of other bats?" This puzzling problem was sent in to curiouscases@bbc.co.uk by Tim Beard from Hamburg in Germany.

Since ecolocation was first discovered, this question has perplexed biologists. Hannah turns bat detective to try and track down these elusive creatures at The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London. This is where zoologist Kate Jones from University College London is using a network of smart sensors to find, identify and track wild bats.

John Ratcliffe from Toronto University chats bats and sonar with Adam to try and locate the answer. It's an unlikely tale involving gruesome early experiments, cunning electric fish and some surprising bat maths.

Send your Curious Cases for consideration to: curiouscases@bbc.co.uk

Presenters: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry Producer: Michelle Martin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Dr Adam Rutherford. And I'm Dr Hannah Fry. And you are going to send us your everyday
0:10.8	mysteries. And we are going to investigate them using the power of science. Science. I like it.
0:21.7	Hello, Curios. We are back. We're back. Hello, Curios. So nice to be back. This is the
0:27.6	eighth series of Curios cases. Every time we get a new series, I'm even more astounded than the last.
0:34.4	It's surprised, pleasantly surprised, but mostly just shocks. Shocks.
0:40.0	We've got quite a few good curious cases coming up for you in this series. We are going to be
0:45.2	looking at whether anything can go faster than the speed of light. Yes. And we're going to be asking
0:50.9	why children don't appear to like vegetables. Yes. A frustrating process for everyone.
0:56.0	It was. It was. But this week, this week, I'm super excited about this one because it's about
1:00.7	too excited. Some people might be. Possibly. But we're telling bat detective.
1:07.0	This week's episode is all about bats and why they don't get confused by the echolocation of
1:14.1	other bats around them. Yeah. Now at the end of the podcast, there's quite a lot of bat chat.
1:20.8	So if you're really interested in listening to me and Hannah, but mostly you're talking about bats,
1:27.2	then I've had eight hours of bat chat today. I'm really. It's 11 minutes past five. We're in a
1:34.0	studio in the BBC and I've had four, eight hours of bat chat. I'm just going to cue you up with
1:38.8	some extra bat fats just to get your bat sensors going. French name for bat. Chevereurie.
1:45.3	That means hang on. No, we're. So he is mouse. Yes. Is it something to do with hair?
1:52.7	Balls. Is it? Bold mouse. Yes. That's quite cute. German. It's flader mouse, which means flying
1:59.3	mouse. Yes. And then fact, there's a bit of the flader mouse by Strouse in the programme itself.
2:03.6	Now, you know, Michelle does a lot of the research for this programme. Oh, yes. She's got this written
2:08.1	down here. Scotland, apparently, bats are sometimes known as Gorky Birds. I've never heard that.
2:14.4	I don't know. I think if you are Scottish Curie, you can confirm, or deny, these
	...

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