Joe Rogan Experience #1932 - Merlin Tuttle

1. 0:00 – 2:02

   Merlin’s origin story: from caterpillars and snakes to bat science

   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.

2. 2:02 – 3:51

   Austin’s bat panic: debunking the “rabid bat invasion” headlines

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:02

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

   2. 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.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:36

      And was that nonsense?

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle2:38

      Absolutely.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:39

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

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle2:43

      Fear of the unknown.

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:45

      Mm.

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle2:45

      I mean, you're probably not totally unaffected. I mean, I know I am when I, I'm much more nervous about taking off in a plane than riding to the airport in a taxi. And yet the taxi is far more dangerous than the plane. (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:01

      Statistically speaking.

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle3:02

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:03

       Right.

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle3:03

       But we fear what we don't know, and it's very ... Very few people know much about bats, and s- so they're easily misunderstood and scared. And in those days, if a bat tried to catch a mosquito near somebody, the person would run like hell thinking that they were being attacked, and they'd never even look around to see the bat catch the mosquito and go on his way. In fact, I had one guy that claimed he was actually, uh, uh ... Uh, the, the bat actually did attack him. And when I looked at the evidence of the attack, I found these big scratches on his arm that a bat couldn't have inflicted, and, uh, turned out he'd run too close to a rose bush on his way to the house and (laughs) got bit by the rose bush (laughs) and blamed the bat.

3. 3:51 – 6:35

   Congress Avenue Bridge: turning eradication threats into a tourism and ecology win

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:51

      So, uh, bats in Austin, what's interesting is this bridge on, uh, near, uh, Lady Bird Lake.

   2. MTMerlin Tuttle3:58

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:59

      Right? And that, that bridge is famously a home for millions of bats, right?

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle4:05

      Up to 1.5 million.

   5. JRJoe Rogan4:07

      That's a lot of bats.

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle4:08

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:09

      It's a beautiful thing when you watch them fly out. The f- one of the first times I've ever come here, yeah, they could see, Jamie has a photo of it happening.

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle4:16

      Right.

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:16

      One of the first times I ever came here, um, we, we went next to it and you could hear the bats.

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle4:22

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan4:22

       Like you could hear them squeaking-

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle4:24

       Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan4:25

       ... and stuff in there.

   14. MTMerlin Tuttle4:26

       Well, when I first came to Austin, I had to face people who were signing petitions to have them eradicated. They were terrified of them. The health department had warned that they were mostly rabid and would attack people.

   15. JRJoe Rogan4:41

       Mostly rabid?

   16. MTMerlin Tuttle4:42

       Oh, yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan4:43

       And what were they basing this on?

   18. MTMerlin Tuttle4:44

       In the early 1980s, there were all kinds of planted stories in the news media by pest control and health people that made money off of fear of bats.

   19. JRJoe Rogan4:55

       Mm.

   20. MTMerlin Tuttle4:56

       And like Family Circle and Good Housekeeping Magazines were running articles like, "Three Years of Terror: A Real Life Ordeal," and one of these stories had the family trapped in their home for three days and nights with bats attacking the windows and doors trying to get them.

   21. JRJoe Rogan5:13

       (laughs)

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle5:13

       And so people were really frightened, genuinely, but all it took to overcome that is I ended up getting a bat of a, of the kind that lives under the bridge and I'd take him around and show him to people. And I remember one lady, actually it was, uh, Ms. Crenshaw, the famous golfer's mother, she, um, thought, you know, when she first heard I was conserving bats, she told her friends, she said, "Well what next? Somebody's gonna be trying to conserve cockroaches." But the first time I actually showed her a live bat in the hand, she was like, "Oh, isn't he cute?" You know, a whole different response. And so bats, once people meet them, they're their own best ambassadors. They're gentle animals that-... a- almost never bite anything except m- an insect or fruit, in- except in self-defense. And, uh, all I had to do was come to Austin and point out that this was a, a treasure not yet recognized. And because of convincing Austin not to eradicate the bats, today, they're, they bring millions of tourist dollars every summer to Austin, and they eat tons of crop and yard pests every night.

4. 6:35 – 8:04

   Why you want bats nearby: mosquito control, reduced pesticides, and biodiversity context

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:35

      So that's what's important for people to understand is they actually serve a very important purpose in the ecosystem, right?

   2. MTMerlin Tuttle6:41

      Yes. A major part of my success in conserving bats has been that I look at it from a standpoint not just that bats or other animals have rights or anything, it's a matter of like 'em or not, we need 'em. And if we understand 'em, we'll probably (laughs) like 'em too.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:00

      And so this, uh-

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle7:02

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:02

      ... eradication idea that people had, that would have been a disaster, like ecologically.

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle7:10

      Well-

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:10

      If they did decide to eradicate the bats and they killed all those bats that were under the bridge.

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle7:14

      Well, what we f- forget is when people warn us about the supposed dangers of having bats around, the real danger is not having bats (laughs) around. Uh, we could be practically buried in insect pests. Bats are the primary controllers of insects that fly at night, like mosquitoes. Uh, a recent study in Wisconsin showed that bats living in people's bat houses in their yards, they looked at the droppings of those bats and genetically analyzed to see what they were eating, and they found that th- those bats living in bat houses were eating 15 species of mosquitoes, nine of which carried W- West Nile virus.

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:56

      Hmm. Do we get West Nile virus in Texas? Is that common?

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle8:00

       I don't think it's real common. I-

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:02

       But it's possible?

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle8:04

       Y- yeah.

5. 8:04 – 11:55

   How to build and place a bat house (and why bats like tight crevices)

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:04

      So a bat house, and this is a photo of a bat house that you have on the cover of your book, I didn't even know that these were a thing. They're like birdhouses, but it's a bat house.

   2. MTMerlin Tuttle8:13

      Yeah, except that they're open at the bottom instead of a hole in the front with a floor.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:17

      And so you, m- people put these up and construct them j- purposely so bats can live in 'em.

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle8:22

      Right. Uh-

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:23

      And how do you get a bat to get in there?

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle8:26

      Well, just like birds, they find 'em and decide they like them.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:29

      They're... Oh, wow.

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle8:30

      Uh-

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:30

      Look at that picture. That's crazy.

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle8:32

       That, that bat house was occupied by 105 bats within a week of the time it was put up.

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:38

       Oh, yeah, you have the little Batman logo on the front of it too. (laughs)

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle8:42

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:42

       So within a week it was put up, there was over 100 bats in there?

   14. MTMerlin Tuttle8:47

       That's right. Now, I wouldn't say that that's what you'd expect all the time. It often takes six months to a year, even sometimes a year and a half to two years to track bats. But, uh, if you put up the right kinda bat house in the right kinda place, you'll probably attract some bats, and it can be a lot of fun.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:05

       And what is a, the right kinda bat house? Like d- do you have to put something in there to attract them?

   16. MTMerlin Tuttle9:11

       No. Just, uh, c- roosting crevices that are three quarters of an inch to an inch wide usually. The bats like those narrow crevices because they're used to snakes coming after them. And like if a big rat snake comes into a bat house to try to catch a bat, if the bat's roosting in a place only three quarters of an inch wide, the snake comes in, he can't open his mouth wide enough to get around the bat's head. He can... But the bat opens his mouth and bites the snake's nose.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:42

       (laughs)

   18. MTMerlin Tuttle9:43

       So I suspect that's a large part of why bats like those narrow crevices as protection against one of their dominant predators.

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:51

       That makes sense. So you would set one of these things up, leave it, and that would help control all sorts of mosquitoes and pests and things that are on your property?

   20. MTMerlin Tuttle10:02

       Yes. Uh, putting up bat houses can be a big help in many ways. There was a recent study done in the Mediterranean that showed that when they put up bat houses ar- strategically located around rice paddies, that they no longer had to use pesticides.

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:21

       Really? That's, uh, that's, that's amazing. Like how many bats do you need to control pest- like, n- you know, what, what kinda bugs are we talking about besides mosquitoes?

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle10:33

       Uh, those were moths that they were controlling. And bats have been found, uh, helping protect rice in Thailand, where they're eating white-bellied planthoppers. They'll, uh, eat a wide variety of insects. Uh, one important point to make, you know, we hear a lot about the importance of biodiversity, and the bat houses in the Mediterranean that successfully eliminated the need for pesticides, they didn't mean that there were never any more pests or that there was no pest damage. What the bats have to do to eliminate the need for pesticides is just lower the damage to a level where the da- cost of the damage is less than it costs the pesti- to put pesticides out.

   23. JRJoe Rogan11:20

       Hmm.

   24. MTMerlin Tuttle11:21

       So the reason that worked was that there was a national park not very far away, and so, you know, if you just have miles of monoculture, uh, what are the bats doing the off season when your pests aren't there? They're gonna starve to death. And so by having diverse habitat not far away, in the off season, the bats had a place to go eat until they were needed over the rice paddies again.

   25. JRJoe Rogan11:50

       Hmm. Okay. That makes sense. So when you-

   26. MTMerlin Tuttle11:55

       (laughs)

6. 11:55 – 16:41

   Winning hearts instead of battles: Merlin’s conservation strategy

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:55

      ... uh, first got here, uh, you- you're dealing with these people that want to eradicate bats. You had to convince them that bats are very important. And how did you go about doing that? Like, what did you do to try to educate people?

   2. MTMerlin Tuttle12:10

      This goes back a ways. When I f- y- what started out, I, when I got my first job, it was a really great job. I was (laughs) got a full salary just to go have fun in the world as far as I looked at it, because I could go anywhere in the world I wanted, stay as long as I wanted, as long as I did good research on some aspect of bat biology. And, um, so when I announced that I was gonna resign that to do full-time bat conservation work, even my closest friends thought I was stark-raving crazy, because in those days, almost everybody, especially in America, thought that if not all, at least most bats were rabid, and they would much rather pay to have a bat killed than to have it saved. And, um, so it was very difficult at first. You know, we hear a lot from environmentalists, conservationists, about the need to win battles. You know, "Send us X amount of money so we can beat up on such-and-such a company," and people, there's a certain type of people that kinda love that. And, uh, but, you know, if you're starting out to save something that everybody hates and they'd really rather spend money to kill it than to save it, you gotta get a whole lot more clever than just asking (laughs) them for money to save the animal. So I had ... I don't think it was because I was particularly smart or anything, but I had to learn early on to win friends instead of battles. And what I found was if I went about it right, and I won enough friends, I didn't need to win the battles. And that's become kind of a dominant part of my approach to conservation, is first of all, you listen to people, and I don't care if they say, you know, "I had fun burning a bat cave in which I killed thousands of bats," or whatever they say. You know, we shouldn't be dwelling in the past. It's the future that counts, and we've all made crazy mistakes in the past, and we wouldn't wanna be hated for the rest of our lives for what we did wrong before we knew what was right. But I found that if I listened to people and took them seriously, and understood that even the person with the wildest tale probably had some reason for believing it. And the more I listened and understood, the better I became at countering it. And also, I always had the attitude of, "I'm not here to just help bats. I'm here to help people and bats. And if you got a problem, I wanna 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.

   3. 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-

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle15:51

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:51

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

   6. 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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:36

      (laughs) That's true, right?

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle16:38

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:38

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

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle16:40

       Yeah.

7. 16:41 – 22:10

   Austin bat species and extreme flight performance (radar, speeds, and tracking limits)

   1. JRJoe Rogan16:41

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

   2. 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.

   3. JRJoe Rogan17:01

      And what's the most common?

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle17:03

      The free-tailed bats.

   5. JRJoe Rogan17:04

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

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle17:08

      Right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan17:08

      So is that an invasive species?

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle17:10

      No (laughs) not by any means.

   9. JRJoe Rogan17:12

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

   10. 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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan18:32

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

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle18:37

       I- it's not very common, but-

   13. JRJoe Rogan18:38

       Less common, but, but prevalent?

   14. 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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan18:58

       What?

   16. 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.

   17. 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-

   18. 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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan19:43

       And why is that?

   20. 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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan20:00

       Wow.

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle20:00

       Actually, the skin on a bat's wing is two layers, and that skin has been rated as 19 times tougher than a surgeon's glove.

   23. JRJoe Rogan20:13

       Wow. Really?

   24. MTMerlin Tuttle20:15

       And what's really cool is even if they get damaged badly, it's amazing what their healing powers are. Sometimes a bat can even have a broken wing and the, uh, swelling around the break will act like a cast and will hold the bone in place where the bat still is able to fly and survive until he can recover.

   25. JRJoe Rogan20:41

       So these bats that we have, w- we have the fast moving bats that are the Brazilian bats, and then you have the other bats which are more maneuverable, but they don't go as fast?

   26. MTMerlin Tuttle20:52

       That's true. And these bats tend to feed in different types of places.

   27. JRJoe Rogan20:58

       And the fact that those Brazilian bats can make it all the way down to the coast and then they come back to the bridge at night?

   28. MTMerlin Tuttle21:03

       Well, I'm not saying they make it all the way to the coast. The trouble is, we haven't yet done good enough tracking to know. (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan21:10

       Can we put, like, a little GPS band on a bat or is it too big?

   30. MTMerlin Tuttle21:13

       Uh, yeah, we can radio track bats. Uh, we'd love to radio track them when they migrate south and see where they're going, but it can be a real problem trying to track a bat at night across the US-Mexican border without getting shot down by somebody. (laughs) I was down looking for bats in the daytime one time with a friend who was an ex-aircraft Navy pilot, and we were in his private plane looking for bats down low along the New Mexico-Texas border, and, uh, first thing we knew, he got forced to land by, uh, drug agents that had overtaken us. And when we landed, we were surrounded by guys with guns (laughs) thinking they had really made the catch of the year, somebody dumb enough to fly in the daytime with his drugs, and they were very disappointed (laughs) to find out we were just bat people. (laughs)

8. 22:10 – 24:56

   Global bat diversity and Merlin’s photography: from flying foxes to tiny bumblebee bats

   1. JRJoe Rogan22:10

      (laughs) So when it comes to bats around the world, how much variation is there? I know that there's some really large bats in Asia, right?

   2. MTMerlin Tuttle22:19

      The- there's some, um, big variation. There's, yes, large bats in southeast and in Asia, Africa.

   3. JRJoe Rogan22:27

      What's the biggest bat?

   4. MTMerlin Tuttle22:29

      The biggest bat has a wingspan of almost six feet. I have-

   5. JRJoe Rogan22:33

      Whoa.

   6. MTMerlin Tuttle22:34

      ... I have a colleague who swears that the biggest one sometimes actually get to six feet.

   7. JRJoe Rogan22:39

      Si- what is that bat?

   8. MTMerlin Tuttle22:41

      Flying foxes. There are 200 kinds of flying foxes.

   9. JRJoe Rogan22:44

      Whoa.

   10. MTMerlin Tuttle22:44

       Some of them are small and some are big.

   11. JRJoe Rogan22:48

       Look at the size of that sucker.

   12. MTMerlin Tuttle22:49

       These are really neat bats. And it's not just these great big bats, but one of the world's smallest mammals is a bat. The little bumblebee bat from Thailand weighs a third less than a US penny.

   13. JRJoe Rogan23:04

       Look at the size of that thing. That's, uh, in the Philippines? Is that what that is? Is that what that says, Jamie?

   14. MTMerlin Tuttle23:09

       Uh. Uh-

   15. JRJoe Rogan23:09

       Yeah.

   16. MTMerlin Tuttle23:10

       Th- these flying foxes are in the Philippines, yes, but they're in a wide area of s- of, uh, the old world tropics. We're very concerned about them because for one-

   17. JRJoe Rogan23:21

       Go back to that photo with the, the ja- the guy next to it so we can see it, the perspective. No, the, the one... Yeah, that one. Look at that. That's crazy.

   18. MTMerlin Tuttle23:31

       I think it's too, too close though. Uh, well, that's- Forced perspective. ... that, that's-

   19. JRJoe Rogan23:34

       Oh, okay.

   20. MTMerlin Tuttle23:34

       ... kinda like holding your fish out a bit in front of you (laughs) -

   21. JRJoe Rogan23:37

       Right. (laughs)

   22. MTMerlin Tuttle23:37

       ... to exaggerate.

   23. JRJoe Rogan23:39

       As I see. But it seems, even if it's, uh, forced perspective, that seems pretty large.

   24. MTMerlin Tuttle23:44

       But, you know, I've never gone there and personally seen it, but I'm told that there's a place on the island of Bali where there's a guy that has tamed wild flying foxes that have these nearly six-foot wingspans. And visitors can actually come and he'll call 'em down out of the trees and they can hang on their arms sometimes for a photo. These are wild bats.

   25. JRJoe Rogan24:07

       So he tamed them with food, just like-

   26. MTMerlin Tuttle24:08

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan24:09

       ... got them accustomed to feeding off of?

   28. MTMerlin Tuttle24:10

       Well, one of the secrets of my... I don't know if you've seen my lar- (laughs) large photo collection. I have the largest collection of bat photos in the world, and a lot of my photos, I get these incredible pictures because I can actually train bats to come and do their natural thing where I can photograph them.

   29. JRJoe Rogan24:32

       And how do you do that?

   30. MTMerlin Tuttle24:33

       Well, when I was a teenager, I learned falconry, and in falconry, you train the hawk to come back on call for a small reward in your hand, and it's the same thing with bats. You train them to get a reward from coming to your hand, and, um ...
9. 24:56 – 27:42

   Bats, food, and disease narratives: Ebola blame, hunting pressure, and a media misquote

   1. MTMerlin Tuttle24:56

      He's got a fig. Now that, that brings up a whole nother story. Bats like that account for up to 98% of the first seed dispersal into cleared areas in Africa, and as you may be aware, desertification is one of the biggest threats in Africa. People cut down the forests. They abandon the land after a few years when it's not any longer productive, and then you very much need something to reseed it, and these fruit-eating bats are often badly over-harvested for human food, and, and most recently because they've been wrongly blamed f- as the source of Ebola, and, uh, when that happens people don't tolerate them anymore, and there goes the seed dispersal that people need if they're going to continue to have viable land.

   2. JRJoe Rogan25:49

      Now you said over-harvested for human food, so it's really common that people eat bats? I know that that was t- the wet market theory, or initially out of the Wuhan area, that people were eating bats.

   3. MTMerlin Tuttle26:04

      Uh, actually, although (laughs) that was speculated early on, uh, when they searched the market they could find no evidence that bats had been sold there.

   4. JRJoe Rogan26:12

      Yeah.

   5. MTMerlin Tuttle26:13

      But, um, uh, bats ... There's evidence that bats were eaten at one time by American Indians. There have been, uh, clay pots found with full bat bones that looked like people were cooking them up to eat, but in memorable history, there hasn't been bat eating in the New World, but, uh ...

   6. JRJoe Rogan26:36

      In memorable history? What do you mean?

   7. MTMerlin Tuttle26:38

      Well, what I'm saying is, there is evidence that American Indians occasionally ate bats, 'cause th- there have been jugs, pottery jugs with lots of bat bones in them-

   8. JRJoe Rogan26:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MTMerlin Tuttle26:50

      ... that look like they were eaten probably by Indians, but, uh, in the old world where bats are much larger, they are frequently eaten, and that's a major cause of their decline.

   10. JRJoe Rogan27:04

       Like where are bats ... What part of the world are bats eaten the most?

   11. MTMerlin Tuttle27:10

       Pacific islands in Indonesia, uh, Southeast Asia, but also the, uh, places like Madagascar.

   12. JRJoe Rogan27:26

       And so how do they cook bats? Like what's a common way to-

   13. MTMerlin Tuttle27:30

       Well, I've got a-

   14. JRJoe Rogan27:30

       ... serve up a bat?

   15. MTMerlin Tuttle27:31

       ... got a picture of them boiled in coconut milk in Guam.

   16. JRJoe Rogan27:35

       Yeah? Did you try it?

   17. MTMerlin Tuttle27:37

       No.

   18. JRJoe Rogan27:38

       Do you v- would you feel bad about eating a bat since you love them so much?

10. 27:42 – 44:06

    Economics, hunting, and compromise: Samoa flying foxes and making allies of “the enemy”

    1. MTMerlin Tuttle27:42

       Well, I, I think we ... I, I don't see a reason to play favorites among animals. Uh, you know, some people think it's okay to rear cattle and, and poultry and things in horrible circumstances to eat, but it's totally bad if a hunter goes out and shoots something from the wild to eat. Actually, I know this isn't gonna set well with everybody, but I would rather in many cases see us harvesting wild animals and s- it would be more compatible with a healthy environment than cutting down all the trees in a rainforest so that we can run cattle.

    2. JRJoe Rogan28:33

       Listen, I agree with you. I'm, I'm on your side with that. Um, but there's not enough wild animals for everybody.

    3. MTMerlin Tuttle28:40

       Well, they're not, but, um, there is something to be said for the hunting side. Hunters get abused a lot by conservationists that become too emotionally involved with their animals. People often ask me, "You, you must really love bats." No, I don't really love bats. I'm a scientist who's very fascinated by them and I'm impressed with how valuable they are, how much we need them, but when I go out to do conservation, I'm looking out for both bats and people, and I think that's the only way we can really be successful. When we get too emotional about animals and we think they have rights that we need to look out for over human needs, then we start getting in- into trouble. Uh, I, for example, years ago got a national pa- led the way in getting a national park created in American Samoa, and how it all started was there were commercial hunters that were devastating flying foxes. They were shooting them and selling them to Guam for a delicacy, and, um, in a very short time, they had wiped out most of the flying foxes from the whole area, and I was asked by a then Harvard 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.

    4. JRJoe Rogan31:49

       Hmm.

    5. 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.

    6. 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?

    7. MTMerlin Tuttle33:37

       Oh, they quit commercial hunting.

    8. JRJoe Rogan33:39

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

    9. MTMerlin Tuttle33:48

       This is something that I, I, I-

    10. JRJoe Rogan33:50

        Is it difficult to discuss?

    11. MTMerlin Tuttle33:51

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

    12. JRJoe Rogan33:54

        Please do.

    13. 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.

    14. JRJoe Rogan35:24

        Hmm.

    15. 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.

    16. JRJoe Rogan35:34

        Is that your alarm that's telling you-

    17. MTMerlin Tuttle35:35

        Yeah, that's my alarm going off.

    18. JRJoe Rogan35:38

        ... you need to take your pill?

    19. MTMerlin Tuttle35:39

        R- remember where I was and...

    20. JRJoe Rogan35:41

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

    21. 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.

    22. 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?

    23. MTMerlin Tuttle36:30

        That's what they were doing.

    24. JRJoe Rogan36:31

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

    25. 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.

    26. JRJoe Rogan36:42

        Hmm.

    27. 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.

    28. JRJoe Rogan37:12

        Oh.

    29. 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)

    30. JRJoe Rogan37:29

        That's hilarious. Wow.
11. 44:06 – 50:27

    Bats as elite pollinators and seed dispersers: Brazil-nut relatives, floral reflectors, and “spring-loaded” pollen

    1. JRJoe Rogan44:06

       I am too. So, what is this large coconut that you brought? What's the deal with that?

    2. MTMerlin Tuttle44:12

       Well, this isn't exactly a coconut, but uh-

    3. JRJoe Rogan44:14

       What is it?

    4. MTMerlin Tuttle44:15

       (laughs) Now look here. See how well this looks like it's all one piece.

    5. JRJoe Rogan44:20

       Right.

    6. MTMerlin Tuttle44:23

       It's a perfect fit. Now-

    7. JRJoe Rogan44:25

       What is it?

    8. MTMerlin Tuttle44:26

       Inside-

    9. JRJoe Rogan44:28

       That's not a coconut?

    10. MTMerlin Tuttle44:29

        No. (laughs) Inside you have in, you know, if this had just picked off the tree, this would be a fruit, and in each fruit you'd have a seed. This is exactly how, uh, brazil nuts grow. And the reason for all this armor plating around is this. There's a bat with a more than two-foot wing span and that disperses the seeds of this tree. 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.

    11. JRJoe Rogan45:14

        More than bees?

    12. MTMerlin Tuttle45:15

        Oh, much more.

    13. JRJoe Rogan45:16

        Really?

    14. 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.

    15. JRJoe Rogan45:25

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

    16. MTMerlin Tuttle45:28

        Right.

    17. JRJoe Rogan45:28

        ... for seeds.

    18. 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.

    19. JRJoe Rogan46:05

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

    20. MTMerlin Tuttle46:09

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan46:10

        ... pries it the rest of the way?

    22. MTMerlin Tuttle46:11

        Right, right.

    23. JRJoe Rogan46:11

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

    24. 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.

    25. JRJoe Rogan46:40

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

    26. MTMerlin Tuttle46:43

        This is si-

    27. JRJoe Rogan46:44

        Is that brazil nuts?

    28. MTMerlin Tuttle46:45

        This is very similar to brazil nuts.

    29. JRJoe Rogan46:48

        What is it called?

    30. MTMerlin Tuttle46:50

        Sapicaya.
12. 50:27 – 1:06:25

    Bat senses and social intelligence: echolocation “vision,” friendships, and learning by observation

    1. JRJoe Rogan50:27

       See, I've always, I mean, I don't know much about bat vision, but I always thought bats had very poor vision and they used sound and they used like a radar to find where they're going.

    2. MTMerlin Tuttle50:37

       They have quite good vision, most of them, but in addition, they can see everything with sound that we can, except color.

    3. JRJoe Rogan50:45

       Oh.

    4. MTMerlin Tuttle50:46

       And they can see a lot more that we can't. Like a bat would know if, from the reflection off my hand that it was a soft surface as opposed to this mic being a hard surface.

    5. JRJoe Rogan50:56

       Really? 'Cause I, I had always heard that they used echolocation because their eyesight was poor. That's, that's really interesting.

    6. MTMerlin Tuttle51:04

       Yeah. Let me finish that story about that Mucuna flower.

    7. JRJoe Rogan51:07

       Sure.

    8. MTMerlin Tuttle51:08

       The flower so wants to be pollinated, and, and I don't wanna be anthropomorphic, but it, it's very advantageous to be visited by, by... Oh, here's the other one. See how the bat-

    9. JRJoe Rogan51:18

       Wow.

    10. MTMerlin Tuttle51:18

        ... fills up the gap and, and carries pollen?

    11. JRJoe Rogan51:21

        Yeah.

    12. MTMerlin Tuttle51:22

        Uh, in the Mucuna flowers, the, uh, the flower doesn't even open and become reproductively active until about 45 minutes after dark, so that it's totally avoiding any late coming hummingbirds or bees or anything like that. It's on a long stem that hangs down so that possums or anything like that can't get to it, and it opens late, and then it has just a little slit that's a millimeter or two wide, and the tongue of the bat has to go into that just like a, a lock and, a key in a door, in a lock. And when-

    13. JRJoe Rogan52:00

        Wow. That is fascinating.

    14. MTMerlin Tuttle52:03

        That's a-

    15. JRJoe Rogan52:03

        First of all-

    16. MTMerlin Tuttle52:03

        ... different kind of flower, but-

    17. JRJoe Rogan52:04

        Look at the tongue on that guy.

    18. MTMerlin Tuttle52:06

        Look, look over at the next one over in the pictures there, that one. This one? Okay, this bat is echo... He's sending his echolocation sounds out through his no- nose. And that leaf on his nose is aiming into the reflector, and so that's guiding him in, and then just below that is the slit I was telling you about that's just a millimeter or two wide, and the bat has to perfectly get his tongue in that slit in order to get nectar or pollinate the flower.

    19. JRJoe Rogan52:35

        Go to that other picture again, Jamie, the one you just showed.

    20. MTMerlin Tuttle52:36

        Right here on the f- on the corner, you got the tongue going into the slit. There? Go over one to the right. Oh. Oh, don't know which one you're looking at. Sorry.

    21. JRJoe Rogan52:48

        No, the one you just had. Go back. Go back. Go back. There's, the far right. There you go.

    22. MTMerlin Tuttle52:54

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan52:55

        That one.

    24. MTMerlin Tuttle52:55

        That one. Okay, there he's got his tongue in the slit.

    25. JRJoe Rogan52:59

        Wow.

    26. MTMerlin Tuttle52:59

        Now-

    27. JRJoe Rogan53:00

        So that, it's almost like it's designed for a bat's tongue.

    28. MTMerlin Tuttle53:03

        The reason it took me 11,000 pictures to get this is that this all happens in tiny fractions of a second.

    29. JRJoe Rogan53:09

        Mm.

    30. MTMerlin Tuttle53:09

        And what's gonna happen next is his tongue goes in there, the flower actually has spring-loaded anthers and fires the pollen onto his rump. That's why you see it, pollen flying around, is 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 result in inferior plant production.
13. 1:06:25 – 1:16:56

    Vampire bats and rabies risk: separating horror lore from real-world statistics

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:06:25

       Wow. So, um, there's carnivorous bats, there's bats that eat fruit, and then why do we call bats vampire bats? Did we initially think at one point in time they were sucking blood?

    2. MTMerlin Tuttle1:06:37

       There are some vampire bats. They're found only in Latin America now.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:06:40

       Oh, so they're real?

    4. MTMerlin Tuttle1:06:42

       Yeah. We, we were just looking at a vampire bat a moment ago.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:06:45

       Okay. So these-

    6. MTMerlin Tuttle1:06:46

       That-

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:06:46

       ... guys with the teeth-

    8. MTMerlin Tuttle1:06:47

       That's a real vampire bat.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:06:49

       Is- And so they actually bite animals and suck their blood?

    10. MTMerlin Tuttle1:06:53

        Uh, lap their blood. Um...

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:06:56

        What is this that we're looking at?

    12. MTMerlin Tuttle1:06:57

        That, that's the kind of special tongue that a vampire bat has for that.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:07:00

        Oh. Oh, whoa.

    14. MTMerlin Tuttle1:07:02

        Now, before you get too put off by vampire bats, let me point-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:07:04

        I'm not put off. I'm excited.

    16. MTMerlin Tuttle1:07:06

        (laughs)

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:07:06

        (laughs)

    18. MTMerlin Tuttle1:07:06

        Let me point out that these are really sophisticated animals, they... in every way. Uh, they're the ones that were first found to f- have altruistic relationships with friends and help them and even fe- feed them in times of need. Uh, they adopt orphans. Uh, these are animals that, that-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:07:28

        Whoa.

    20. MTMerlin Tuttle1:07:29

        They're always per- they're almo- now you didn't get this from my website. No, no, no. I just-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:07:34

        No, this is YouTube. This is Smith-

    22. MTMerlin Tuttle1:07:35

        Uh, if, if you went to my website, one of the cutest pictures on my website, one that I get a big kick out of showing people, because when I show it to them, they, they'll, their reaction is, "Oh my God, isn't he cute?" And it's a vampire. It depends on how you show these bats. They're right there at the bottom. That's a vampire. Um, it was. No, wait, not that... This photo. That one. That's a vampire.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:08:00

        He's very cute.

    24. MTMerlin Tuttle1:08:01

        And just how you show these animals.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:08:03

        Well, you're very defensive, 'cause I don't have a problem with them being vampires.

    26. MTMerlin Tuttle1:08:07

        Well, I don't have a- (laughs) I don't have a problem with, with ... Now, the, the first one you're looking at that was lapping blood-

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:08:15

        Yes.

    28. MTMerlin Tuttle1:08:15

        ... that, that was Desmodus rotundus, the-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:08:17

        It's fascinating. I, I mean, I don't, I don't have a problem with it. I think it's really interesting.

    30. MTMerlin Tuttle1:08:21

        It's the kind of vampire that causes most of the trouble, that gets vampires in trouble in Latin America. They're a problem because we came in cut down the rainforests and brought in cattle, and they overpopulated 'cause they had an easy food supply.
14. 1:16:56 – 1:39:39

    Field-adventure highlight reel: curare arrows, insurgents, “jaguar” signals, cobras, and bandits

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:16:56

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

    2. MTMerlin Tuttle1:17:02

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

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:17:05

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

    4. 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.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:17:30

       Hmm.

    6. MTMerlin Tuttle1:17:33

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

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:17:46

       Oh.

    8. 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.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:17:59

       Really?

    10. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:00

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

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:18:06

        Mm-hmm.

    12. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:07

        You see the-

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:18:07

        Yeah.

    14. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:07

        ... three notches?

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:18:08

        Yeah.

    16. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:09

        Well, th- where your thumb, your base thumb is, that's where it fits into the end of the arrow-

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:18:14

        Mm-hmm.

    18. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:14

        ... with the shaft, and then when that hits you, it can't just go through and not poison you. It's very (laughs) clever. It ... poof, like shrapnel-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:18:26

        Hmm.

    20. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:26

        ... into you. So once that arrow hits you, no matter where it hits you, you're gonna die because you got all that, like, shrapnel that's soaked in curare in you.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:18:35

        Wow.

    22. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:37

        So, in my travels studying bats, I have (laughs) had every kind of experience you can imagine, from, uh, living with Aboriginal Indians to being captured by insur- terrorist insurgents to-

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:18:56

        You got captured?

    24. MTMerlin Tuttle1:18:57

        Yeah, having my camp attacked by bandits, uh, being hunted by Aborigines that didn't want ... that had bad experience with other outsiders and wanted to kill me, uh, being charged by angry elephants, stalked by lions. (laughs) You name it, and I've had it. (laughs)

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:19:16

        Tell me about being captured. What happened there?

    26. MTMerlin Tuttle1:19:19

        Well, that's, that's a really good story to illustrate the, uh, value of making ... being able to make friends whether you agree with somebody or not. Back in my first big job outta college, I was co-director of the Smithsonian's Venezuelan project, a big $400,000 field project collecting small mammals, and one of the first places we stayed-... was high up on a mountaintop in a resort setting, where the previous dictator of the country had built this and when, when he was thrown out of power, nobody wanted to acknowledge that that was worth anything, so it was just sitting up there with a caretaker. Well, the, uh, we w- were allowed to go up there and use it for collecting. It was beautiful habitat surrounding it and, uh, I quickly found out, figured out that the, um, head caretaker there was actually one of the local Communist leaders, and, uh, we got to be good friends and he would laughingly call me his, his, uh, Yan- his amigo Yanqui, and I'd call him mi amigo Commie.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:20:34

        (laughs)

    28. MTMerlin Tuttle1:20:36

        And, uh, you know, and, and it wasn't very hard to find common ground, that neither one of us agreed with everything our governments did and, um, I got to be such good friends with him that when my boss, Dr. Handley, came down... he was the director of the Mammal Division at the Smithsonian... when he came down to visit and see how things were going, I borrowed the local Communist leader, borrowed his Jeep 'cause ours hadn't arrived yet, and I took Dr. Handley with me looking for bats up in the mountains and we had the misfortune of running into a secret meeting of Co- of Communist insurgents. There ensued a wild chase. We were on a muddy, slick road, very narrow, one lane, sometimes dropping off 200 feet on one side. It was crazy. They finally caught us and when they caught us, the only thing that saved us was we were in the Communist Party boss's Jeep and they radioed him for instructions what to do with us.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:21:38

        Wow. So if you-

    30. MTMerlin Tuttle1:21:40

        If-

Episode duration: 1:51:37