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Vegans of tumblr, listen up. Harvesting agave in the quantities required so you dont have to eat honey is killing mexican long-nosed bats. They feed off the nectar and pollinate the plants. They need the agave. You want to help the environment? Go back to honey. Your liver and thyroid will thank you, as well. Agave is 90% fructose, which can cause a host of issues. Bye.

Tickell's Bat, photographed by Adil Khan, (source)

IMO spectral bats sit either in the middle of weaver-z's Bat Appearance Graph, or have a significant rightward lean because of their dog-like face.

The moment they open their jaws and reveal those fangs, though, they zip into solid 'Those Feratu' territory. Or, that just solidifies their position of being in the middle of the graph.

Spectral bat collection pics. because they're fucking sublime.

x

Got any adorable photos of Lasionycteris noctivagans? P.S.: a related question; are LANO capable of taking off from the ground, or are they a 'must drop to fly' bat species?

image description: a black bat with white-tipped fur being held with wings outstretched by a researcher wearing blue latex gloves. image source: Larisa Bishop-Boros, via wikipedia

Silver-haired Bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) Technically all bats can take off from the ground, however, most species can not do it very well*, and the silver-haired bat is no exception to that.

*There's only a couple species that are known to be good at taking off from the ground: the common vampire bat, the pallid bat, and the New Zealand short-tailed bats.

Brandt's Bat: researchers once documented a case in which a Brandt's bat had survived in the wild for more than 40 years, making this the longest-living bat species in the world

In 1964, a wild Brandt's bat (Myotis brandtii) was captured, banded, and released by researchers in the Biryusa region of Siberia. The very same bat was eventually recaptured by another team of researchers in 2005; it would have been at least 41 years old by then, making it the oldest bat ever recorded.

The previous record-holder was also a Siberian Brandt's bat (with an estimated age of 38 years).

There are twelve other species within the genus Myotis that have been documented living past the age of 20, but the lifespan of the Brandt's bat is exceptionally long, especially compared to other small mammals.

This species (and the longevity of a few other bat species) defies our conventional understanding of the relationship between an animal's size and its lifespan -- smaller animals normally have a much shorter lifespan compared to large animals, partly due to their higher metabolic demands, but these bats represent a rare exception to that rule. In fact, with an average weight of just 4 to 8 grams (which is roughly the combined weight of 2 or 3 pennies), the Brandt's bat has the longest lifespan of any mammal relative to its size.

Research suggests that its increased lifespan may be at least partially linked to a mutation in two of the genes that are related to growth. This article describes the results of one particular study:

Genes for two proteins involved in growth — called growth hormone receptor (GHR) and insulinlike growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) — showed changes that also appear among other long-lived bat species. Previous studies in mice and other animals suggest genetic changes in GHR and IGF1R are linked with longevity. For instance, mice with mutations in GHR live twice as long as normal mice, said study researcher Vadim Gladyshev, a geneticist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

These same genetic changes also may be responsible for the bats' small size ...

"We think the bat's life span is, in part, an unintended consequence of its small body size."

There are a few other factors that may also play a role:

Brandt's bats also hibernate and roost in caves — behaviors that may help them avoid predators and extreme weather conditions, and contribute to their longer life span, the researchers said. The Brandt's bat also takes a relatively long time to reach maturity, and it does not produce many offspring — two characteristics seen in larger, longer-living mammals.

Note: nearly all of the articles that I came across refer to the 41-year-old bat as a "Brandt's bat," but at least one other source uses the term "Siberian whiskered myotis," instead. That term simply refers to the Siberian variety of the Brandt's bat (subspecies Myotis brandtii sibiricus) in particular.

Sources & More Info:

The Journals of Gerontology: A New Field Record for Bat Longevity

Bat Conservation International: Myotis brandtii

Nature: Genome Analysis Reveals Insights into Physiology and Longevity of the Brandt's Bat, Myotis brandtii

Nature: DNA Methylation Predicts Age and Provides Insight Into Exceptional Longevity of Bats

New Scientist: Gene Clues May Explain Why Brandt's Bat Lives So Long

Sugar Donut

@teagantheamazing Hope you don't mind, but I wanted to pull this reply out to talk about a little more in depth, because I think it is important that people understand this as we move forward.

Also, I am speaking as a private citizen here, not as an employee of the Forest Service.

In the United States, wildland fire response is handled at three basic levels: Federal, State, and Local.

Federally, it is further broken down into the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. (Some parks have their own fire crews as well, but that varies from park to park, and they're usually still technically Forest Service.) There's really not a ton of difference between the two aside from whose name is on your paycheck. Pay is the same across each, structure is the same across each, training is the same across each. Federal crews and resources are, generally, the main and biggest responders to wildfires because wildfires tend to happen primarily on federal lands.

At the state and local level things vary a lot from state to state. You can have things like the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control in Colorado and Cal Fire in California, and you can have local structure departments that also have wildland divisions and/or training. Some of the local departments will be volunteer. State and local responders also work closely with federal responders, but how much and for how long varies from fire to fire.

Then, on top of all of that, you have private/contract crews. They are what it says on the tin: private crews of firefighters. Some of these crews are great! Very professional, very skilled. Others are...ah...not.

Now, what I am concerned about specifically as we head into this new administration is what is going to happen at the federal level. As I mentioned in the original post, the Forest Service is already struggling. It has ALWAYS been struggling. Without giving you a whole huge history lesson, the Forest Service was founded in the early 1900s by Teddy Roosevelt to protect public lands and preserve them for future use. People threw a FIT about it, specifically people who wanted to basically strip mine the forests for every single available resource. Taft was elected after Roosevelt and basically started undoing everything his predecessor had done. The budget for the Forest Service was destroyed, protections were rolled back. The only reason the Forest Service survived was because in 1910 there was a MASSIVE fire. It was, at the time, unprecedented and the Forest Service was able to use it to lobby for better funding going forward. But the same cycle has repeated ever since. An administration that doesn't value conservation will come in, shred the budget, there will be deadly consequences that make the next administration pad the budget some, and then it will start again.

It's a lot like people who stop taking their medicine because they think they're cured since they feel better, but they only feel better because they were taking their medicine.

So what happens now? Well, it's already happening and it happened under Biden, and will only get worse under Trump. To keep it simple, there are two kinds of federal employment: seasonal, and year-round. Most of the federal Forest Service jobs are seasonal, because the work is seasonal. This includes firefighters, but it also includes things like park rangers and trail maintenance crews. From late spring to early fall there are tooooons of people working. Then, the rest of the year, its a skeleton crew of year-rounders doing mostly maintenance work, controlled burns, paperwork, stuff like that.

Now, with all of that said, here is where we stand at this specific moment: the decision has already been made that the Forest Service will not be hiring seasonal workers outside of firefighting next year. This means no seasonal park rangers, no seasonal maintenance people, none of that. This means next year parks are going to be a MESS. Bathrooms will not be cleaned regularly, campgrounds will not be maintained, trails will not be maintained, and a ton of other stuff. The year-rounder skeleton crew will be all we've got. And, crucially, there will be less professionals monitoring the woods looking for new fires. Rangers, even ones not working directly on fire stuff, are a crucial level of protection for spotting and reporting fires.

Secondary to that is the pay issue. Even if you're a year-rounder, the pay is abysmal. Your average out the gate, newbie wildland firefighter is going to make around $17/hr base pay if they work for a federal agency. Now, there's a ton of random stuff that can bump that pay up even without the retention bonus we're currently getting. You get a night differential and a Sunday differential for starters, and hazard pay when you are actively working a fire, plus there's ALWAYS overtime, sometimes an insane amount of it. Then there's per diem if you are traveling for a fire, and that can be a nice little bump too. But the point/problem is that the pay is VERY unpredictable. You can have a massively busy season and be swimming in money, or you can have a slow as fuck season and end up scrapping by because the base pay isn't enough. The Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act is supposed to fix this by bumping up the base pay, but that can has been kicked back and forth in the government for yeeeears now.

Now, as you mentioned, people CAN transfer their federal qualifications for fire to state and private crews. It generally pays better if you do. But we do not want to privatize fire response. Given the size of this country, given the spread of the population within it, we have to have a federal firefighting force. Leaving it to the states and private companies will not be enough.

That is where we are starting the new administration: abysmal pay, failing departments, and slimmed back hiring. Given Trump's repeated insistence on slimming down the government, on withholding aid in blue states, on getting rid of things like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which is also crucial for firefighting), and other things in that vein, I think we are staring down the barrel of a very, very dangerous time.

So, some action items if you want to help:

Call your local representatives and insist they pass the Wildland Firefighter Protection Act NOW, before the new administration comes in. The new administration could still screw it up, but we've gotta at least try.

Be patient and understanding with Park Rangers in the coming years. They are doing their best with what they've got.

Take responsibility for your use of public lands. Clean up after yourself, pick up litter when you see it, and donate if there is a way for you to do so.

Educate yourself and your community on wildland fire even if you don't think you are in a wildland fire prone area. Learn about and implement defensible space around your homes and communities. I'll be doing a lot of education around this going forward, so if you have questions or want help please ask me!

...Ideas... But on the other hand... why? Because fun, of course! Additional fun!

Behold, my homemade d20 with pips! Takes a while to count up the higher numbers.

I don't know who needs to hear this but anyone saying "Just stop- You sound like Trump voters after he lost in 2020" in regards to those considering asking for a recount are either psyops or woefully ignorant of the situation.

You don't sound like a sore loser for taking note of the well documented cases of burned ballot boxes in at least three states, and multiple bomb threats to polling places in heavily democrat-populated areas in swing states, which shut them down for hours on election day.

Or taking note of other alleged voting interferences such as mail-in ballot tampering, or the case where a mail carrier has been arrested for stealing and forging mail-in ballots in Colorado.

Or for taking note of the fact that Trump constantly told us he "had a secret plan" to win the election on election day.

Or the fact that conservatives (and Trump) have a long history of cheating, and the fact that there's literally evidence that they meddled in at least the last two elections.

And no, I won't be linking sources, because I want you to look this up yourself instead of just taking my word for it.

My point is that it's reasonable to be suspicious and want to double check, especially given all that I listed above.

The reason we called Trump voters sore losers wasn't because they asked for a recount- they had every right to do so, just as we do now.

They were called sore losers because not only had there been no evidence of tampering or fraud (unlike this election), they didn't stop at asking for a recount- they got violent and started not only multiple riots, but also an attempted fucking coup where they stormed the capitol and chanted that they were going to hang Mike Pence because he refused to overturn the election.

Ask for the damn recounts if you want them. Every party has the right to ask for a recount.

Is there a good chance it changes nothing? Of course!

The worst that might happen when asking for a recount is just finding out that the count was accurate and needing to accept that and move forward.

But that still doesn't make it stupid for someone to ask for one given the fact we saw in real time several reports of election tampering. Besides, even if it doesn't change the outcome of the presidential election there's still a chance it might influence the outcome of the local elections, which are also very important!

This obsession with the left needing to appear constantly stoic and poised and unbothered, to the point of being too embarrassed to stand up for ourselves or even ask questions in fear of "looking as bad as them" is going to be the death of all of us.