Bats at Orlando Science Center: Not Bitten, Just Smitten

I showed up at Orlando Science Center that Friday with a mouthful of plastic: a new retainer, meant to corral a tooth that had decided it wanted to turn sideways and get a different view of the world than it had had since 1971. If you had braces you know the feeling of a tooth being slowly dragged through your gums and into its proper place; it makes your  head ache and makes you talk funny. I meet Rob Mies, director of the Organization for Bat Conservation, sounding like Daffy Duck.

“Don’t worry, my wife had one of those, I don’t think you’re weird,” says Mies, who I’m interviewing for National Geographic about the OSC’s exhibit  Bats: Myth and Mysteries an exhibit sponsored by the OBC and packed with info, visual magic and real live bats. As we walk  towards their enclosures Rob tells me all the reasons why bats are misunderstood creatures, like:

* They’re nocturnal. “People are kind of afraid of nocturnal things,” so like the neighbors you never bother to meet you might believe whatever slanderous gossip you hear. 

. * They are the only flying mammal, which makes them sort of rebellious and disturbing. We expect spiders and octopus to be bizarre but mammals should be fuzzy and relatable instead, not leathery and mysterious.

* They have been made monstrous by pop culture, which often holds greater sway over us than fact. There are vampire bats but they mostly drink the blood of cows and then about teaspoon at a time. (Draculin, an anti-clotting enzyme in their saliva is being studied as a potentially helpful in saving the brain cells of stroke patients). 

As we approach the enclosure of the  straw-colored fruit bats I’m too startled to hear anymore: the bats look like puppies. Puppies with wings. They’re not menacing. They’re adorable. Up until now, though, bats pretty much scared the bejesus out of me. Once when a bat flew into a local theater, I flew out faster than I would have if someone shouted “Fire!”

“Let’s go see them!” Rob says walking up to the door of the enclosure. I quickly calculate whether it’s ever okay for a NatGeo blogger and allegedly adventurous person to say “Nope, nope, nope,” when given such an opportunity, but my feet have made the decision. They just keep following Rob into the cage where these bats are about to erase my misgivings forever. They do this by walking silently past my head in a steady single file upside down line, using claws on the edge of their wings like a monkey would use its hands…left, right, left right, in a surreal little parade (you can see them on the video, shot on a later visit). They’re getting their distance from me so they can size me up and decide if I’m okay. It’s mesmerizing.

. “After 22 years I still stop and watch them all the time,” Rob says, empathetic to my trance. His original plan was to be an environmental lawyer “something to protect nature and wildlife,” but also to get a biology degree. While clerking at a law firm and had an opportunity to do field research on bats, first in Indiana, then Australia, then Costa Rica. “Twenty two years later I didn’t go to law school,” he says, but he did protect nature, as a field ecologist, conservation biologist, author and spokesperson for bats in North America. The bats got him.

They got me, too: this type of animal advocacy is invaluable. I feel like I’ve just been charmed by a foreign culture, which I’ve unfairly maligned because I didn’t understand it until I was in it. This whole time bats I should have loved bats: they can eat thousands of bugs in a night. There are over 1000 species, some with almost six-foot wingspans, some that look like cotton balls. Vampire bats are even kind to each other: if one hasn’t eaten they’ll regurgitate blood for the hungry bat. I’ve known people who wouldn’t even share their fries.

And you want to see some bats while you can. They’re in serious danger, largely due to a fungus called white nose syndrome which causes them to awaken too early in winter, fly out of their protective hibernation and starve to death. 

If you want to meet, learn about or help bats there are a number of ways to do it.The Orlando exhibit ends on Jan. 4 but you can visit Gainesville’s Lubee Bat Conservancy or Google “bat centers” find out where to see them in your area. The Organization for Bat Conservation has education programs and numerous ways for you to help bats, including making donations (researchers are racing to find a way to beat white nose syndrome) or buying a bat house, a safe place for bats to roost on your property (and eat your bugs). 

The most comprehensive and endearing portrait of bats you’re likely to find anywhere was written by my colleague Jason Bittel for Slate and includes their their rich (and sometimes kinky) sex lives and how they were almost employed as bombardiers in World War II. 

So that’s how Rob Meis and his bats won me over. My opinions about things are usually so intractable fracking couldn’t dislodge them, but puppy faces - backed by excellent advocacy - proved more powerful. Take it from someone who thought they’d get bitten and got smitten instead.

(Video and first photo, Straw-colored fruit bats, Orlando Science Center, Liz Langley; Second photo, human-sized bat and human skeleton comparison, OSC exhibit, Liz Langley, last photos, grey-headed flying fox babies, Wikimedia commons)