yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Capturing a Carnivorous Bat on Camera | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] When National Geographic asked me to photograph this bat story, I was really excited because it was an opportunity to work with some really interesting scientists, like Rodrigo.

I get to work with the species I've never seen before. Very little has been studied about these bats, and so I was really interested in figuring out how I can show these bats' predatory behavior in captivity or in the wild.

So, I'm working on getting this flight cage set up for tonight. I, along with Rodrigo, are catching a Carollia tawny, or the car top terrace, for us to film and record inside this flight cage.

What we've got is camera flashes, infrared lights, continuous lights, bat detectors. All of this stuff is to try to catch a Carollia in the action of hunting prey. They've actually brought lab mice from the University of Mexico, and this is all to try to better understand how this bat hunts in the wild.

How does a bat approach? How does a bat kill the prey? The idea here is to recreate the environment outside. So, when the mouse is moving around, it's going to be creating some rustling sounds, and we think that's what the bat is using to locate the prey.

There's one photograph in particular that encapsulates this story I'm trying to show: the temple and the bat, where you can see and identify both things. I've got one light that's going to light the bat from below, and by lighting it from below, I can actually project its shadow like a bat signal against the wall of the temple.

Now, from the very beginning, I've been studying how these bats leave their roost. I set up infrared video cameras, and I've watched them every night. It turns out for that first few meters as they leave, they all follow the same path.

So, I've got my sensor in place, I've got my lights in place, now we just gotta wait. You know, these scientists are just getting started trying to understand these bats, and so to be able to come here and actually contribute something to understanding these animals through photography, that's really why I do what I do. You [Music]

More Articles

View All
Why Aliens Might Already Be On Their Way To Us
The universe is magnificent and vast. Hundreds of billions of galaxies, trillions of stars, and even more planets. If even the tiniest fraction are habitable, then the universe should be teeming with life. And yet, we see nothing; only vast emptiness. Whe…
Khan Academy Live: AP Calculus
Hi and welcome to live tutoring for the AP Calculus exams provided by Con Academy! In case you are curious, I am not Sal Con; my name is Dave. I first took the AP Calculus test back in 2006, and before joining KH Academy, I was an AP Calculus teacher. So…
Finding area of figure after transformation using determinant | Matrices | Khan Academy
We’re told to consider this matrix transformation. This is a matrix that you can use, it represents a transformation on the entire coordinate plane. Then they tell us that the transformation is performed on the following rectangle. So, this is the rectang…
What You Might Not Know About Twitter | Squawkbox
[Music] Said wow. With Jack departing, the Twitter board collectively owns almost no shares. Objectively, their economic interests are simply not in line with shareholders. Joining us to talk about the takeover battle and Musk’s stance on free speech, Kev…
Getting To Kiwalik - Behind the Scenes | Life Below Zero
Campers aren’t working. That’s getting super frustrating. This is what it’s like on Life Below Zero. Cameras are already down. Tough conditions all around. I fill in: no heat, no car, no anything; won’t even turn on. Too many times we’ve had batteries go …
Innovation Requires Decentralization and a Frontier
Innovation requires a couple of things. One of the things that it seems to require is decentralization. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Athenian city-states, the Italian city-states, or even the United States, when it was more free-form and invo…