Joe Rogan Experience #1932 — Merlin Tuttle Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the Joe Rogan experience We moved into a new neighborhood one time, and a welcoming committee came over to welcome my mother to the neighborhood. That's hilarious. still a lot of bats if it hadn't been for my moving when i first began to be interested in Fear of the unknown. couldn't have inflicted, and turned out he'd run too close to a rosebush on his way to the house

4:09 It's a beautiful thing when you watch them fly out. And stuff in there. by pest control and health people that made money off of fear of bats. She thought, you know, when she first heard I was conserving bats, and they eat tons of crop and yard pests every night. If they did decide to eradicate the bats and they killed all those bats that were under the bridge?

7:56 Do we get West Nile virus in Texas? Yeah, except that they're open at the bottom instead of a hole in the front with a floor. That's crazy. you'll probably track some bats and it can be a lot of fun and what is uh the would set one of these things up, leave it, and that would help control all sorts of mosquitoes Those were moths that they were controlling. And bats have been found helping protect rice in Thailand where they're eating white-billed plant hoppers.

11:35 pests aren't there? They're going to starve to death. And so by having diverse habitat not far anywhere in the world I wanted, stay as long as I wanted, as long as I did good research on some And people, there's a certain type of people that kind of love that. You know, we shouldn't be dwelling in the past. It's the future that counts. And so I learned to be good at listening to people.

15:56 well that's all part of just not understanding in fact one of the big problems for bats is that, you know, That's true, right? That's true. Night shift people are kind of creepy. So that's the one when you see And each of those subspecies, the first one was described in Brazil, these days. So, and what is the other bat that's very common here? It's not very common. Less

19:29 were you know like kind of like bird speed like a regular bird bats are by far the most maneuverable fast-moving bats that are the Brazilian bats, Yeah, we can radio track bats. We'd love to radio track them when they migrate south and see where And they were very disappointed to find out we were just bat people. What is that bat? Is that what that is?

23:57 And visitors can actually come, and he'll call them down out of the trees, and they can hang on their arms sometimes for a photo. and there's some of your photos there yeah whoa and what does that little Now, you said over-harvested for human food. But in the old world where bats are much larger, they are frequently eaten, and that's a major cause of their decline.

27:35 Did you try it? a healthy environment than cutting down all the trees in a rainforest so that we can run cattle emotional about animals and we think they have rights that we need to look out for over human needs, then we start getting into trouble. And I just came across as, you know, another guy that was perfectly happy with hunting. And I just asked innocent questions, you know, not too many of them at once.

32:03 Lutale, they were thrilled when I offered to intercede with the governor on behalf of getting game laws But by being willing to compromise and see both sides early on, we gained a whole national park in addition to solving our original problem and showed the value of making friends instead of winning battles. Have you had bat before? approached me and said well you said that there's a real problem with people eating too many flying

34:53 And they chopped up the bats. Is that your alarm that's telling you to take your pill? living for and you're working out and staying in health, you can still function perfectly fine taking a few pills and going on with your life. because I just wasn't about to swallow all those chopped up bones. You're exempted. That sucks. At one of the caves that we ended up saving,

39:08 and then a few days later i saw a man we saw a man running real hard down the road down into the flight plan of the bats and they'll wait until a wing touches their nose, and then they can be incredibly fast about grabbing the bat. Is that what bats' number one predators are other than human beings? That's a big, big bat too, boy. I suppose you could say that.

42:00 We live in a world where all these living things are interdependent, size bighorn ram you might pay a hundred thousand dollars to shoot one and i'm told that there are But as long as the ultimate goal is that we're improving the health of the natural world See how well this looks like it's all one piece. seeds of this tree and this tree doesn't are such—most people aren't aware of this, but bats are by far the best, the most effective long-distance seed dispersers and pollinators in the world.

45:32 dispersed it opens just a crack enough to let the scent out and there's this out how to beat the bats to it, but it's grown way up high on trees and we don't have a system Sapicaya. Really? It's fascinating because it seems like it's been cut. We haven't talked at all about pollination. Let's see, that's one that does that, but it's not the one I'm talking about.

49:23 Oh, wow. I'm trying to. pictures to get that picture. Yes. And they can see a lot more that we can't. The flower so wants to be pollinated, and I don't want to be anthropomorphic, but it's into that just like a lock a key in a door in a lock and when wow that is fascinating that's a And the bat has to perfectly get his tongue in that slit in order to get nectar or pollinate

52:55 Okay, there he's got his tongue in the slit way you see it pollen flying around as he's just been shot and by putting it on the bat's rump then that flower doesn't mix pollen with other species which might cause hybridization that would Look at that. bag of cereal. Well, now this illustrates what I'm saying when I talk about bats being by far the most efficient carriers of large amounts of pollen long distances.

55:41 Right. Not just I can kind of understand the bats adapting, but the plants. the more we discover about the natural world, the more we find that there's just a whole lot In my own banding studies years ago, I banded 40-some thousand bats in one study. but that's almost getting to be an out-of-date word as we find more about what Now, are there some bats that are more complex than other bats,

59:17 centipedes and scorpions and so i was trained this bat to come to my hand on call because I was going to put in a natural-looking set a centipede some other information that might be being distributed, whether it's through sound or whether it's through some sort of, Again, tiny, tiny little guys. holding it one hand and handing it mealworms to the other.

1:02:21 out that he wanted to be fed. He wasn't really attacking me and uh so my wife saw this and said uh get your shirt on it was really hot and i didn't have a may never have eaten a non-flying insect before, So have you tried other kind of experiments to see? Oh, yeah. It's the biggest New World bat. It's not a vampire bat. That is a vampire bat. The Vampyram Spectrum.

1:05:58 I saw him a year later and said, well, how did your research go? He laughed, shook his head, So these guys with the teeth. I'm not put off. I'm excited. one that I get a big kick out of showing people because when I show it to them, their reaction is, oh, my God, isn't he cute? He's very cute. I think it's really interesting. Well, we kind of do it because we buy the beef from Latin America.

1:09:19 For example, here in the United States, there was a time when people thought that all bats or most of them were rabid. Well, if you get rabies, you're going to die, but most of the time you will. How would you be able to discern whether a bat is rabid in the wild? base population. We don't really know how the U.S. and Canada combined, in the U.S. alone, we lose between 40 and 50 people a year from dog attacks.

1:12:33 So these vampire bats, do any of them prey on humans? And that's where most of the vampire bats are? But bats, how did they get connected to bats? So what's the most common bat in the world? They are programmed to live up to 40 years or more. You can get millions in a single cave. Fear. Hmm. arrowhead container. Yeah. Yeah, having my camp attacked by bandits, being hunted by aborigines that didn't want,

1:19:34 Smithsonian's Venezuelan Project, a big $400,000 field project collecting small mammals. And one leaders. And we got to be good friends. And he would laughingly call me his amigo Yankee, boss's Jeep, and they radioed him for instructions what to do with us. Wow. So if you were just in an Right, but what did they think you were doing? expedition rather uh probably not no uh one one night on the uh upper mavaca river we were named bats in an area where we didn't think there were any aborigines that would bother

1:23:39 with a young man, Venezuelan, who worked for me. And we'll never know whether they were asleep or not because we did get shoved off and got away. So I didn't really take them very seriously. They were so scared. Woo! Whoa. the Kosikari Canal is the world's longest natural canal. a lot of money because it was risky to the planes. And so I got the military to send the money to the Bank of America in Caracas.

1:29:26 the robbers are coming and uh they were coming up the river in a little But here they're coming, and I'm responsible for eight or ten people, their lives. And then as the bandits approached, I yelled down to them in Spanish But they finally, at the last minute when they saw they were outgunned and we had the upper hand, they backed up and went off.

1:31:55 Well, I've never chosen to get myself into big adventures, but— Here's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a group of people and they're speaking pidgin english you know there's no such thing This was happening. And what we eventually found was that the reason they welcomed us so strongly So that first night, we set up camp by a beautiful stream in the jungle.

1:36:07 And so he, since we knew they were thinking of being attacked any time, he instructed me what to do if we were attacked. just a lot of spirits with good ones and bad ones and they were trying nose and we i've got it on film right up until the guy tried to attack and kill me and then i had to Did you get tempted to try it? sleeping because these people are seeing things right and i. And I'm scared shitless. Oh, boy. And so I'm laying there in the middle of that when all of a sudden.

1:39:25 It's a video gallery. I was trying to't find it. Where is it at on your website? It's a video gallery. Wow. and playing with him. Stupid Petricks. John Cleves will be out here a little bit later, Hi, Doctor. How are you? Good. I'm scared silly of bats, and probably most people who know nothing about them are also frightened of bats. Now, is there any real reason to be worried about bats?

1:42:15 animals. And he said, oh, let me show you. Dr. Tuttle here's got bats. And oh my God, she just did found back conservation international i'm proud of what we have managed to accomplish there What did they want to do? Right. know, I can tell you stories endlessly of the great things we've accomplished ensure that my legacy of information, photographs, and other things remains available to help

1:46:33 all that would have to happen is people listening right now give even a couple dollars apiece, That's right. Yes, we do. And your work has been really amazing. He's yelling so loud I don't want to do it because I'd hurt my throat. that's tying his foreskin up. If that ever breaks, they act as though you would if you were in town I'll try again. And if anything happened to me out there, it would just be, remember years ago when the Rockefeller person just disappeared and nobody knew what happened to him.

1:50:15 Oh, dimethyltryptamine. So they were really hallucinating. And people can get a hold of your books. Thank you, Merlin. All right.