Be sure to follow the link to see the gear used to take the picture!
Search
Profile
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
• a longer profile of yours truly
• my calendar
• Nature Network
• RichardDawkins Network
• facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Atheist Nexus
• the Pharyngula chat room
(#pharyngula on irc.synirc.net)
I reserve the right to publicly post, with full identifying information about the source, any email sent to me that contains threats of violence.
Random Quote
When we describe something as a random process or an event as occurring by chance, there are two very different things that we may have in mind. …[One such concept of chance applies to processes] that are apparently random, but have a deterministic basis. … The process is apparently random because we are ignorant of at least part of the deterministic basis. We use words like chance and random to indicate our ignorance. "We should separate apparently random processes from irreducibly random processes. An irreducibly random process is one that has no deterministic basis. That is, for an irreducibly random process, there is no set of laws of nature that can be applied to a complete description of the initial state of the system to permit the deduction of a description of the outcome.
Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), p. 86.
Recent Posts
- Our illness is their profit
- Friday Cephalopod: NUMBERLESS HOSTS!
- Dear Jezebel
- There Will Be Blood?
- Zooming in on the Origin of Life Science Foundation
- Friday Cephalopod: Feasibility trial successful
- Making excuses
- More bad science in the literature
- An open letter to the Indiana legislature
- One Carnival of Evolution, coming right up
A Taste of Pharyngula
Recent Comments
- Tumara Baap on Our illness is their profit
- chriswarr on Our illness is their profit
- vibise on Zooming in on the Origin of Life Science Foundation
- mrpoxman on Our illness is their profit
- Everbleed on Friday Cephalopod: NUMBERLESS HOSTS!
- CherryBombSim on Our illness is their profit
- I'm sorry, thank you on Our illness is their profit
- https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlg3ZrAn0yJktAa1txQLOB6bCND-AfW0pA on Our illness is their profit
- mandas on Our illness is their profit
- sue.welsh on Our illness is their profit
Archives
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
Blogroll
Other Information
« A Brazilian poll | Main | And now for a little local net warfare… »
More articles by PZ Myers can be found on Freethoughtblogs at the new Pharyngula!
Say you’re a thirsty bat. What do you do to get a drink of water?
Category: Organisms
Posted on: September 23, 2009 10:54 AM, by PZ Myers
Find more posts in: 
Life Science
Life ScienceTrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/120663
Leave a comment
HTML commands: <i>italic</i>, <b>bold</b>, <a href="url">link</a>, <blockquote>quote</blockquote>
Comments
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
|
September 23, 2009 11:00 AM
Very nice. As a photographer myself, that's one hell of a capture.
Posted by: PaleGreenPants
|
September 23, 2009 11:06 AM
*blink
wow
Posted by: Fred The Hun
|
September 23, 2009 11:10 AM
Nice!
But, "Bat Detector" LOL!
Posted by: ER Doc
|
September 23, 2009 11:15 AM
That's a truly impressive shot! I wonder how many attempts had to be discarded?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
September 23, 2009 11:15 AM
Wow! If you can't stage it, great care must be taken to get that type of shot. I just love those type of pics.
Posted by: holydust
|
September 23, 2009 11:21 AM
Drive-thru!
Posted by: shaunotd
|
September 23, 2009 11:28 AM
Awesome work there!
Posted by: Standard Curve
|
September 23, 2009 11:34 AM
Beautiful! I love bat pictures where you can clearly see the chiro in the ptera.
Posted by: Michelle R
|
September 23, 2009 11:42 AM
AWRRR. So cute.
Posted by: Acolyte of the Pink Unicorn Goddess
|
September 23, 2009 11:46 AM
What incredible pictures. Bats are truly wonderful and beautiful critters. Wonder why my mum would never agree to let me keep one as a pet ;)
Posted by: recovering catholic
|
September 23, 2009 11:56 AM
While working on his PhD in mammalogy, my husband was occasionally called upon to "rescue" bats from various of the old halls on the University of Illinois campus. Twice, we kept the bats for several weeks until the weather was warm enough to release them outside.
Both bats (one big brown, one little brown) became tame very quickly and we soon stopped using gloves to handle them. We would toss mealworms into the air and watch the bats catch them in mid air, or we'd hang them by their little feet from the curtain and feed them crickets. Munchy munchy crunchy crickets, but the bats would let the big hind hopper legs drop to the ground. Too high a chitin-to-protein ratio, we assumed.
The main problem at first was water--the bats had no idea how to drink from a small container. Then we noticed them swooping low over the kitchen floor and realized that it must appear to their sonar that the smooth surface was water. We poured some water on the floor, and that's how they got their water until they learned to drink from a container in their cage.
Posted by: https://certifi.ca/eean
|
September 23, 2009 1:21 PM
Awesome image, but....
Daily Mail, noooo!
Posted by: Desert Son, OM
|
September 23, 2009 1:42 PM
That's a simply stunning photograph.
No kings,
Robert
Posted by: formosus
|
September 23, 2009 1:55 PM
I must say, after doing a (very) little bit of internet research, i must say bats are tremendously interesting little creatures. Evolving flight despite their dense bones, and then echolocation. Such an interesting trait. Natural selection is a far better designer than humans - it took us thousands of years to replicate the skill that bats and dolphins have had for millennia.
Posted by: Paul Burnett
|
September 23, 2009 2:02 PM
Anybody who has read this far in the thread should know about "Bat Conservation International" - http://www.batcon.org/
I have actually seen bats doing this on a farm pond. Sometimes they just leave a dot-splash on the water, but sometimes they draw a line a foot or two long.
There's a bird does a lot better job of this - see http://www.majestyofbirds.com/blackskimmerphotoskimming.html
Posted by: JackC
|
September 23, 2009 2:33 PM
@Paul Burnett
What the... OH!! baTcon.org - I thought that was BACON.org... wondered what all those wind gens had to do with pigs....
Just kidding - but seriously, I think I drove past that very farm a few weeks back - if that is the one you pass on the way to Arizona from LA.
JC
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
September 23, 2009 3:03 PM
I am impressed by the effort involved in getting those photographs.
Posted by: shaunotd
|
September 23, 2009 3:33 PM
@ Fred the Hun #3
Alright smarty-pants, what would you call a device for detecting bats? 8-P
Posted by: Die Anyway
|
September 23, 2009 3:52 PM
In the background... there... do I see Big Foot? Oh no, of course not. We can take hi-res, high-speed pictures of bats in flight but Sasquatch is always blurry, fuzzy, out-of-focus. Sigh...
Posted by: Spiv
|
September 23, 2009 4:10 PM
Amazing pictures. I've lived around bats all my life and never knew they did this to get water.
Also, looking at the pictures I'm fascinated by the texture on their wings during flight. I'd love to run this through fluent, it looks to me like that pattern would drastically reduce boundary layer friction and make the whole of flapping more efficient.
I think I should have studied bats. Plus I'd get to live the fabulous life of a chiropterologist! Which I imagine is about 50% spent explaining just what it is they do.
Posted by: Fred The Hun
|
September 23, 2009 4:11 PM
Jimminy Crickets! I hang my head in shame.
I figured I could easily come up with a snarky reply till I Googled "Bat Detector".
I had no idea it was such a popular item that not only can you buy them off the shelf ready made, but they actually sell "Ultrasonic Tweeter Transducer 4 Bat Detector Qty=2" for the intrepid DIY'er.
Now I'm actually afraid to Google "Bat Shit Detector" ;-)
Posted by: harv
|
September 23, 2009 5:34 PM
Texas Board of Education: we scoured our copy of "Birds of Texas" and couldn't find this creature. He must be from out of state.
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
|
September 23, 2009 5:45 PM
How hard can it be? You stuff the damn thing and mount it on a thing pole under the surface.
Seriously, though. We have bats here, but the cats are a bit too fond of them. Dunno if they manage to get them, but they try, for certain. The neighbour's two are really
This past Saturday we visited the family graveyard to do some much needed trimming (read: go at it with a motorsaw and spade). Found a family of six hedgehogs in one of the bushes we removed. Managed to relocate them to another grave, but it took three tries to discover all the wee hogs.
Posted by: bungoton
|
September 23, 2009 7:39 PM
harv, you gave me the best laugh of the day.
Do the rest of our readers know the bible says bats are type of bird?
Posted by: BobbyEarle
|
September 23, 2009 10:57 PM
I saw the BatPic earlier, and I thought it was very cool. Then my day turned to shit. So, after coming home and locking myself inside my little den of iniquity to hide from the world for a while, I returned for a second look.
I feel a ton better. Thanks, PZ. And thanks to our nameless, mammalian friend.
Posted by: DingoJack
|
September 24, 2009 10:03 AM
Spiv (#20) - If someone at a party asked "what do you do for a living?" And you said "I'm a chiropterologist", odds-on you'd get "I've got this ingrowing toenail..." kind of reply. :(
Fred the Hun (#21) - Don't be afraid, the results would probably be as boring as ... well... you know.
Sili (#23) - "And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes 'Do bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it." :) - DJ
Posted by: Victor
|
September 24, 2009 12:16 PM
The picture of the bat doesn't exist. I know, because he used science to capture it, and science is wrong. :)
Posted by: effingtheineffable.wordpress.com
|
September 24, 2009 7:28 PM
Awesome. And the Daily Mail were so excited they completely forgot to tell us whether bats cause or cure cancer...
Posted by: speedweasel
|
September 24, 2009 10:30 PM
"And the Daily Mail were so excited they completely forgot to tell us whether bats cause or cure cancer... "
It doesnt take a scientist to work out that bats cause cancer due to the 'electrosmog' generated by their radar(s). Its just common sense. Open your eyes and see the TRUTH, sheeple!!!1~!@