BATS by John H. Lienhard Click here for audio of Episode 1054. Today, we meet some beleaguered animals that should be our friends. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. A sensate joy in the ambient world draws her, relentlessly, to the problem of preserving both her surroundings and the pleasure she finds in them. Saving a vanishing species, she points out, is a lot easier when the species is winsome like the panda.
Pandas eat huge amounts of bamboo and convert it to manure.
They're strongly woven into their ecology. Yet we're moved to save them, not for the good of the ecosystem, but because they're cute. Then there are bats. Bat wings are actually long webbed fingers on the bat's forelimbs. Bats, who live 20 or 30 years, and breed only once a year, use those articulate, prehensile wings to cuddle their young.