Joe Rogan Experience #1932 - Merlin Tuttle

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Well, welcome to the show, Merlin. Tha- what a great name, by the way.

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle0:16

      Thank you.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Your parents named you Merlin. Did they make you get into magic at all when you were young?

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle0:22

      (laughs) My mother actually named me Merlin DeVere, and her hope was that she would get a kick out of me being a medical doctor, M.D., Tuttle, M.D.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:33

      Ah.

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle0:34

      But it didn't work out that way. (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:36

      Well, uh, you're a bat scientist. How does one, how does one specialize in bats? How'd that journey start?

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle0:43

       Well, I was always interested in anything in nature. I started out at two collecting monarch caterpillars and watching them make cocoons and hatch into butterflies. And, and then I went into a snake phase in which-

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       (laughs)

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle0:56

       ... my mother was not happy with that phase. At five, I was dragging in sometimes snakes four or five feet long and they'd get loose in the house and ...

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       Oh, no.

   14. MTMerlin Tuttle1:05

       (laughs) We moved into a new neighborhood one time, and, uh, a welcoming committee came over to welcome my mother to the neighborhood. And I had a few days before caught a seven-foot-eight-inch coachwhip snake that I was really proud of, but it got out, and we couldn't find it in the house. We thought it had gotten out of the house. The group's standing around welcoming my mother to the neighborhood when all of a sudden, she sees everybody with a look of horror on their faces-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:33

       (laughs)

   16. MTMerlin Tuttle1:33

       ... and they're heading for the door. And this snake had reared up behind the ha- couch. It was looking for all the world like a cobra looking around. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:41

       (laughs)

   18. MTMerlin Tuttle1:41

       And only one of those women would ever even speak to my mother again.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:45

       That's hilarious.

   20. MTMerlin Tuttle1:46

       (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:47

       Your crazy son with his snakes. Um, so, uh, you are a bat scientist.

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle1:53

       Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       And, The Secret Lives of Bats is one of your books, and the other one is The Bat House Guide.

   24. MTMerlin Tuttle2:01

       That's the most recent one.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:02

       Um, there's a lot of bats in Austin, Texas.

   26. MTMerlin Tuttle2:05

       That's right. Uh, actually I moved to Austin because there are a lot of bats here, but there wouldn't be probably still a lot of bats if it hadn't been for my moving. When I first began to be interested in conserving bats, Austin was making more negative publicity about bats than any other place probably in the world. There were news headlines from coast to coast saying that hundreds of thousands of rabid bats were invading and attacking the citizens of Austin.

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:36

       And was that nonsense?

   28. MTMerlin Tuttle2:38

       Absolutely.

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:39

       Why, why do you think, uh, pe- people have this fear of bats?

   30. MTMerlin Tuttle2:43

       Fear of the unknown.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   So a lot of…

   1. MTMerlin Tuttle15:00

      know what it is. I wanna understand it, and then maybe I can help you solve it." And so I learned to be good at listening to people, and I'm sure you've experienced a good share of winning is just listening. Most people will like you if you just take time to listen to them, even if you, or it opposite poles as what you believe. And so by, by learning to listen well, and then have an attitude that, "What can I do to help you?" uh, I was able to change a hell of a lot of people's minds about bats.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:43

      So a lot of people, they have this idea about bats based on, like, horror movies, vampire movies, and whenever you see, like, Halloween decorations-

   3. MTMerlin Tuttle15:51

      (laughs)

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:51

      ... there's always bats involved. Bats are thought of as like a creepy, kinda scary animal.

   5. MTMerlin Tuttle15:57

      Well, that's all part of w- just not understanding. In fact, one of the big problems for bats is that, uh, you know, out of the more than 1,400 species in the world, the vast majority of them, we hardly know a thing about them other than that they've got a name. And they fly erratically. They live in places that people often consider kinda spooky, the basement or the attic or the cave, and we don't know what, what they're gonna do next, because they fly so erratically and they're associated with the night. I mean, even people who work at night aren't trusted as much as people that work in the daytime.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:36

      (laughs) That's true, right?

   7. MTMerlin Tuttle16:38

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:38

      That's true, night shift people are kinda creepy.

   9. MTMerlin Tuttle16:40

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:41

       Yeah. So, um, these bats that we have, uh, in Austin, uh, is there more than one species?

   11. MTMerlin Tuttle16:49

       At least 99% one species under the bridge. There's probably two species there. One's the cave myotis that usually lives in caves, and the other is the Brazilian free-tailed bat.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:01

       And what's the most common?

   13. MTMerlin Tuttle17:03

       The free-tailed bats.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       So that's the one, when you see the big swarms, most of them are the Brazilian free-tailed bats.

   15. MTMerlin Tuttle17:08

       Right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:08

       So is that an invasive species?

   17. MTMerlin Tuttle17:10

       No (laughs) not by any means.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:12

       So why is it called the Brazilian free-tailed bat?

   19. MTMerlin Tuttle17:14

       That's a good question. Uh, species often get named by where they were first discovered, and the species was first described by specimens discovered in Brazil. Then it was discovered later that it was found all the way up into the United States, and there were subspecies named. It was thought originally that there was a different subspecies in Mexico that came up into Texas, and a third subspecies in Florida and the Gulf region, and each of those subspecies ... The, the first one was described in Brazil, so it was Tadarida brasiliensis brasiliensis, and then Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana from Mexico, and so on. But then a genetic study was done and found that they're so broadly mixed genetically that you couldn't separate out subspecies, and so they went back to the original name, and it's now called the Brazilian-... free-tailed bat, which is kind of a pain for all of us that knew it for many years as the (laughs) Mexican free-tailed bat. But, uh, that's just the way of genetics. Sometimes I like the common names even better than the scientific because they don't seem to change as rapidly (laughs) these days.

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:32

       So w- and what is the other bat that's very common here?

   21. MTMerlin Tuttle18:37

       I- it's not very common, but-

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:38

       Less common, but, but prevalent?

   23. MTMerlin Tuttle18:41

       Yeah. The cave myotis. It's, uh, a slower flying, more agile, maneuverable bat. The free-tailed bats can fly thousands of feet above ground, and they can travel at, get this, with a, with a tailwind, they can go 100 miles an hour.

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:58

       What?

   25. MTMerlin Tuttle18:59

       100 miles an hour. And our bats from the bridge could easily be feeding clear down on the coast at some nights. Uh, I've s- watched on Doppler weather radar, we can watch them really well on radar. And I've watched where they come out of, let's say Bracken Cave down near San Antonio, and we see the front band of moving bats crossing four to five counties in 12 minutes.

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:26

       Wow. I had no idea. I thought they were, you know, like, kind of like bird speed. Like a regular bird. Not like a-

   27. MTMerlin Tuttle19:34

       Bats, bats are by far the most maneuverable, best flyers in the world. Uh, they can do things that neither birds nor insects can do in flight.

   28. JRJoe Rogan19:43

       And why is that?

   29. MTMerlin Tuttle19:45

       Uh, they don't have fixed, hard wings. You know, like insects, the wings are made of chitin and they, they don't bend that much, except at the joints. And birds' feathers aren't nearly as flexible as the skin on a bat's wing.

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:00

       Wow.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hmm. …

   1. MTMerlin Tuttle30:01

      botanist graduate student who was finishing up his PhD if, if I would come and do something to, uh, help save the bats. So, I got together a couple of donors and him and we went out to American Samoa, and the first thing I did the first day, my collaborators were all worn out from an overnight flight so they slept in. Well, while they were sleeping in, I went out and made friends with the commercial hunters, and I just came across as, uh, you know, another guy that was perfectly happy with hunting, and, and in fact, I am-... I'm sure as a population ecologist that we need hunters. We've wiped out most of the dominant predators of the world, and if somebody doesn't act as the dominant predators, we're gonna have trouble. But, uh, I went out and I made friends with the, uh, hunters, and they actually invited me to go out on a hunt with them that night. Well, I didn't shoot any of the bats, but, um, they only shot two in the whole evening and they were saying, "Oh, you should've been here last year. We could've shot 100 in an hour." And I just asked innocent questions, you know, not too many of them at once, uh, "Well, what do you think caused all this?" And they readily admitted that they shot too many. And so, you know, eventually I'd ask, "Well, what are you gonna do? You know, your grandchildren are not gonna be able to hunt bats anymore 'cause you hun- hunted them all out." And after just a few nights... Now, when my colleagues found out what I'd been doing, oh my God, if I'd been fireable, I would've been fired. Uh, they were very (laughs) upset that I had consorted with the enemy.

   2. JRJoe Rogan31:49

      Hmm.

   3. MTMerlin Tuttle31:49

      But, um, in the end, these, uh, commercial hunters recognized they had a problem and they actually in, eh, when I told them that in a few days that I was gonna be meeting with Governor Lutali, they were thrilled when I offered to intercede with the governor on behalf of getting game laws to make sure there were flying foxes in the future. We joined forces that way, and as they learned more about the flying foxes and what they did, they not only got game laws passed in record time, but they self-imposed on themselves... well, actually they completely outlawed commercial hunting, the commercial hunters did, and then they themselves declared a five-year moratorium on all flying fox hunting so that they could recover. And when I asked about it of a Samoan biologist 25 years later, he said they still weren't hunting flying foxes and the flying foxes had recovered. I think there is some hunting now, but the point is, if we had just gone barreling in there that we hated these guys because they did something that we didn't like and they'd almost caused the extinction of a bat, we would've gotten nowhere, and if we'd have insisted that they quit all hunting immediately, we'd have gotten nowhere. But by willing to, 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 (laughs) of making friends instead of winning battles.

   4. JRJoe Rogan33:28

      The value of diplomacy. So, um, what did they hunt instead of the flying foxes? What did they transition over to if they're commercial hunters?

   5. MTMerlin Tuttle33:37

      Oh, they quit commercial hunting.

   6. JRJoe Rogan33:39

      Oh, wow. So, uh, are w- are you curio- have you had bat before? Have you eaten it?

   7. MTMerlin Tuttle33:48

      This is something that I, I, I-

   8. JRJoe Rogan33:50

      Is it difficult to discuss?

   9. MTMerlin Tuttle33:51

      I guess I'm going to be honest with you.

   10. JRJoe Rogan33:54

       Please do.

   11. MTMerlin Tuttle33:54

       The reason I'm hesitant is that one time I was coming out of a news conference at National Geographic. They'd just published... I've done five articles with them and they'd just done a news conference about my article, uh, on flying foxes. And as I was coming out of their front door, an Associated Press reporter approached me and s- said, "Well, you, you said that there's a real problem with people eating too many flying foxes. Have you ever had one?" And being honest, I said, "Well, you know, in Thailand one morning I had been out with poachers learning about what they were doing to cause problems, and, uh, you know, they were doing something that I really wanted to stop, but they were really nice people." The guys, the poachers, were just trying to support their families and we got to be friends, and they invited me for breakfast. And what'd they serve me but bat ha- pancake, bat s- burger, and they chopped up the bats, bo- they did this with chickens and fish too. They would chop them up bones and all, and my God, I, I used to k- kid some of them about how they survived without dying of punctured throats or stomachs from all those bones. Well, they chopped up these patties, and in Thailand, especially in those days, if you refused to eat what somebody served you, it was the ultimate insult. You were implying that they were trying to poison you and you didn't trust them.

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:24

       Hmm.

   13. MTMerlin Tuttle35:24

       So I, um, ended up trying to eat part of one of those burgers. Well, I didn't, I didn't get very far.

   14. JRJoe Rogan35:34

       Is that your alarm that's telling you-

   15. MTMerlin Tuttle35:35

       Yeah, that's my alarm going off.

   16. JRJoe Rogan35:38

       ... you need to take your pill?

   17. MTMerlin Tuttle35:39

       R- remember where I was and...

   18. JRJoe Rogan35:41

       You were talking about eating bats. I'm ready, don't worry.

   19. MTMerlin Tuttle35:45

       Yeah, I've got Parkinson's and, uh, I have to take pills several times a day, but, uh, I'm, I mentioned that I do have Parkinson's because I'd like to encourage others that have it that, uh, you know, oftentimes if you've got something you're living for and you're working out standing health, you can still function perfectly fine taking a few pills and going on with your life. I still traveled the whole world. I was in South Africa and Zambia just recently.

   20. JRJoe Rogan36:15

       Hmm. There's water right there. (clears throat) So they take these bats and they just chop them up and turn them into patties and make burgers out of them?

   21. MTMerlin Tuttle36:30

       That's what they were doing.

   22. JRJoe Rogan36:31

       And they're, they're doing it, they, so they, d- they take the skin off of it?

   23. MTMerlin Tuttle36:35

       Actually, I'm told that in the S- South Pacific, it's considered bad etiquette if you don't eat the skin too.

   24. JRJoe Rogan36:42

       Hmm.

   25. MTMerlin Tuttle36:42

       But to finish these guys' story, I...... surreptitiously spit most of it out, because I just wasn't about to swallow all those chopped up bones. (laughs) But, uh, I admitted that I had had a couple mouthfuls of bat. This reporter went out and did a major story in which he claimed that Dr. Merlin Tuttle, this famous bat conservationist, traveled the world looking for new ways to eat bats.

   26. JRJoe Rogan37:12

       Oh.

   27. MTMerlin Tuttle37:14

       And I was so... I've never been so beside myself angry. I went to a judge friend and s- asked if there was anything I could do, and he said, "No, no, you're, you're too well-known as a public figure. You're, you're exempted. You can't (laughs) defend yourself that way." (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan37:29

       That's hilarious. Wow.

   29. MTMerlin Tuttle37:32

       So that's why I was a little hesitant when you asked me if... (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan37:35

       Well, I mean, that's the media for you. There... Well, it's not the media, it's people that use the media, and, uh, they're unscrupulous. It's, it's very discouraging.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   More than bees? …

   1. MTMerlin Tuttle45:00

      And this tree doesn't... Bats are such, most people aren't aware of this, but bats are the, by far the best, uh, the most effective long-distance seed dispersers and pollinators in the world.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:14

      More than bees?

   3. MTMerlin Tuttle45:15

      Oh, much more.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:16

      Really?

   5. MTMerlin Tuttle45:17

      Oh, yeah. And so here's what happens with this. This hangs down like this, 100 feet up in a big tree.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:25

      So that's like a tree pod, like a pod-

   7. MTMerlin Tuttle45:28

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:28

      ... for seeds.

   9. MTMerlin Tuttle45:29

      Right. And when it's ready to be seed dispersed, it opens just a crack, enough to let the scent out. And there's this big bat that knows exactly how to pry this loose. The reason for all this armor plating is that the plant does not want monkeys or other primates, or, or parrots or other birds. It just wants bats because bats are the best seed dispersers. And so it's going to all this energetic trouble to protect itself from everything but bats. The bat pries this off.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:05

       So that just kind of falls open? It opens up a little bit and then the br- the bat-

   11. MTMerlin Tuttle46:09

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:10

       ... pries it the rest of the way?

   13. MTMerlin Tuttle46:11

       Right, right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       So it's almost like it's just a little built-in door.

   15. MTMerlin Tuttle46:13

       Yeah. And then he carries this, this would be a fruit. This is dried with the seed inside. He carries this away and drops the seed when he finishes eating. And in fact, this nut that's in this fruit would be commercially sold if we could figure out how to beat the bats to it, but it's grown way up high on trees and we don't have a system for beating the bats to it.

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:40

       And thi- this is brazil nuts. Can I see that?

   17. MTMerlin Tuttle46:43

       This is si-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:44

       Is that brazil nuts?

   19. MTMerlin Tuttle46:45

       This is very similar to brazil nuts.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:48

       What is it called?

   21. MTMerlin Tuttle46:50

       Sapicaya.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:52

       And these are edible?

   23. MTMerlin Tuttle46:54

       Yes.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:54

       Like we can crack this sucker open and eat it?

   25. MTMerlin Tuttle46:56

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:57

       What's it taste like?

   27. MTMerlin Tuttle46:58

       I don't know. I've never eaten one.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:59

       Really? But you have all these. You're not curious? If I was you-

   29. MTMerlin Tuttle47:03

       Oh, oh, I, I-

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:03

       ... I'd be eating bats, I'd be trying out these seeds.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Wow. …

   1. MTMerlin Tuttle1:00:00

      call, the little bat came and got the reward. And I couldn't believe it. Here was this little guy that I was sure didn't have enough intelligence to be trained, and it trained by just watching me train another bat.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      Wow.

   3. MTMerlin Tuttle1:00:13

      And let me d- ... uh-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

      Do you think it's watching and observing, or do you think there's some other information that might be being distributed, whether it's through sound or whether it's through g- some sort of ... maybe some sort of, like, some-

   5. NANarrator1:00:30

      (clears throat)

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:30

      ... unknown connection that they have to each other? Pheromonal connection? Psychic connection?

   7. MTMerlin Tuttle1:00:36

      Well, uh, pheromones certainly play a role, but, uh, mostly everything that I've seen, I would ascribe to intelligence and thinking. Uh, let me-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

      An observation?

   9. NANarrator1:00:48

      (clears throat)

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle1:00:49

       Let, let me tell you a story that really still boggles my mind. My wife and I had gone to Borneo and set up my portable f- photo studio. We were gonna photograph little woolly bats that weigh less than a nickel. Again, tiny, tiny little guys. And they live out in swamps where there's no way we could go out in the swamp to photograph them. They live in pr- pitcher plants. And get this, the pitcher plant puts up a reflector over the top to guide the bat to get to the pitcher plant, and then has a special ridge inside where he can sleep, almost like-... providing a bunk bed, and, uh, we had gone out there to photograph these bats, but we couldn't do it out in the swamp 'cause it rained every little bit, and you're wading waist deep, and there are poisonous snakes hanging from the vines and just wasn't a good place to take pictures. So we caught this bat, brought it back to my studio, and the first evening I hand-fed it mealworms, holding it one hand and ha- handing it mealworms with the other. And, uh, then the next morning when my wife and I came back to the studio, this bat was hanging up in one corner of the studio, and it immediately recognized me. It didn't try to go to her. She didn't feed it before. (clears throat) It came to me and started bumping me in the nose. In fact, I, I believe you may have a video of that that you can share. He started bumping me in the nose, and I don't know how I so quickly figured it out, but I figured 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 shirt on. And, "Get your shirt on," and she grabbed the camera. Watch this bat. He's coming up, pestering me to give him a mealworm. He's only one time in his whole life eaten a mealworm. Only one time gotten it from me.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:02:50

       (laughs)

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle1:02:51

       And how'd he figure out that my face was the place to get my attention?

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:02:55

       Wow.

   14. MTMerlin Tuttle1:02:55

       And so I went and got my shirt on. She gr- and it was still doing this. Watch, when I held up my hand, it knew to come and get the mealworm. And this bat had never had a mealworm in his life before. May never have eaten a non-flying insect before. Certainly never seen a human until the night before. Absolutely mind-boggling.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:03:15

       Wow. That's wild. So that, it just learned. It learned and it remembered you.

   16. MTMerlin Tuttle1:03:22

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:03:23

       So, um, have you, have you tried other kind of experiments to see... You know, you know how, like, they've done experiments with crows where they find out how intelligent crows are 'cause they can get them to use tools and... There's a little cough button if you want to use that.

   18. MTMerlin Tuttle1:03:37

       I'm okay. Thank you.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:03:37

       Clear your throat. But there's, um, you know, they've, they've done all these experiments with crows and found out that crows are incredibly intelligent and much more intelligent than we ever suspected. Do you think-

   20. MTMerlin Tuttle1:03:48

       Absolutely.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:03:49

       ... do you think that would be the case with bats as well, that you can get them to do things?

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle1:03:52

       Oh, yeah. Uh, I don't know what you could get them to do. It'd have to be something in line with what they... Well, I, I, I can't comment. What I can tell you is that one of the smartest colleagues that I ever had, a guy named Jack Bradbury, he was a top-notch bat researcher. He ended up going off studying, I think it was grouse or something. But, um, back when he was studying bats many years ago, he announced that he was going to try to test vampirum spectrum. This is a big carnivo- carnivorous bat with a nearly three-foot wingspan. It's the biggest new world bat, lives in the tropical America. He was going to test them to see how smart they were. And, um, this is a cool bat. Let me... Before I tell you about his test, the parents take turns babysitting. They go out and they hunt and bring food back for the one that stayed and watched the pup. Uh, they appear to mate for life, and they're carnivores. They eat everything from insects and frogs to rats and parrots.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:04:58

       And this is a vampire bat?

   24. MTMerlin Tuttle1:05:00

       It's not a vampire bat. It's named vampirum spectrum because somebody mistook its big teeth and thought that it was a vampire when they named it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:05:07

       Uh-huh. And what is it... Want to tell more about this bat?

   26. MTMerlin Tuttle1:05:10

       Well-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:05:10

       Is that what this is? Is that this kind of bat?

   28. MTMerlin Tuttle1:05:12

       No, that is a vampire bat.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:05:14

       Oh. Oh. I just switched it. Just switched this.

   30. MTMerlin Tuttle1:05:15

       That is a vampire bat.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00

   Ah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      Ah.

   2. MTMerlin Tuttle1:15:00

      Uh, first of all, they're among the least-known, most feared, most often needlessly persecuted animals. Secondly, they have very slow reproductive rates. They are programmed to live up to 40 years or more, and that brings up another interesting aspect. Instead of trying to find ways to fear bats, we oughta be finding ways to understand better why they can do the crazy, the really neat things that they can do.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:26

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle1:15:27

      They can s- survive up to 40 years in the wild, and that's the equivalent of a human living to be 100 and still able to run sprints through obstacle courses. They're also largely immune to things like arthritis and cancer.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:46

      Hmm.

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle1:15:46

      But they're very vulnerable because they're, they're dependent on long lifespans and slow reproduction. Most bats produce only one pup per year. They aggregate in these huge concentrations. You can get millions in a single cave, and here in the new world, I have personally investigated cases where somebody set ... you know, just put old car tires in a cave entrance, poured kerosene on it, lit it on fire, and killed millions-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:16:16

      Oh.

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle1:16:16

      ... in single incidents. Uh, they ... because bats form the largest, most conspicuous colonies, are the most easily seen and also misunderstood, uh, and have slow reproduction, they're prime targets for bad things to happen in terms of survival.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:16:35

      And, and what is the common reason why people are killing bats? Like, what ... why someone would go out of their way to do something like that, like light tires on fire to kill them?

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle1:16:42

       Fear.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:16:42

       Fear. Misconceptions.

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle1:16:44

       Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:16:44

       Yeah.

   14. MTMerlin Tuttle1:16:45

       Nobody who fully understood bats would be out there killing them.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:16:49

       And when they're lighting these fires, it's just the smoke that's killing the bats?

   16. MTMerlin Tuttle1:16:53

       Yeah. Toxic smoke a lot.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:16:56

       Hmm. What is this tube that br- that you brought? You said there's something crazy in there.

   18. MTMerlin Tuttle1:17:02

       Yeah. I bet you've never seen anything like this on your show before.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:17:05

       I bet you're right. What is it? (laughs)

   20. MTMerlin Tuttle1:17:08

       Well, I don't wanna sidetrack the whole conversation here, but I've had a lot of really wild adventure experiences while looking for bats. This is a Yanomamo Indians arrowhead container. Notice the top of it is made out of ocelot fur, the fur is still on the hide on the inside.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:17:30

       Hmm.

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle1:17:33

       And if we look in here, this is, uh, an arrowhead. Now, that is coated in curare.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:17:46

       Oh.

   24. MTMerlin Tuttle1:17:49

       That's not still lethal because it's very old. I've had it for decades. But when I first got it, it would've ... if somebody had poked you with it, you'd be dead in a couple minutes.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:17:59

       Really?

   26. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:00

       And that is made specifically to kill humans. Notice the notches every few inches.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:18:06

       Mm-hmm.

   28. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:07

       You see the-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:18:07

       Yeah.

   30. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:07

       ... three notches?
7. 1:30:00 – 1:31:13

   Section 7

   1. MTMerlin Tuttle1:30:00

      uh, so here we are with the bandits coming, armed with shot... Uh, it was kinda interesting. They had old muzzleloader, uh, guns that they actually used rocks in, rocks and black powder (laughs) still to shoot, and but here they're coming and I'm responsible for eight or 10 people, their lives, and am I gonna be a conscientious objector or what am I gonna do? (laughs) And so I broke out all the guns we had, gave everybody one of the, you know, everything from an M1 rifle to a couple double-barreled shotguns, pistols, and, uh, got everybody positioned behind rocks and logs, and then as the bandits approached, I yelled down to them in Spanish that, uh, we understood who they were and that if they touched that rock, we're gonna kill them. And they kept coming. And so I finally had everybody show themselves and their guns and yelled one more time, and the last time I yelled, they were within a meter of hitting the bank. And at that point, we'd have had to kill them.

Episode duration: 1:51:37