THE OFFICIAL DELUXE

PROFESSIONAL GUIDE TO

STARING AT THE SUN

VOLUME 47: Can’t You Hear That Rooster Crowin?

Can't you hear that rooster crowin'?

Rabbit runnin' down across the road

Underneath the bridge where the water flowed through

So happy just to see you smile

Underneath the sky of blue

- Bob Dylan

Life is happening all around you! Roosters are crowin, rabbits are jumpin, the river is running under every bridge, everywhere, all at once.

Imagine for a minute that you’re standing still. Now remember that you’re flying through space aboard a planet traveling at roughly 355,000 miles per hour. That’s 0-60 time for ya!

Our planet, and likely many others, are full of lively beings, each one at this very moment taking a breath, or doing whatever it is they do if oxygen isn’t their thing. All at once, life is being lived not just by you, but by an entire universe.

You are a part of it. You are apart from it, a little, too.

Take a quick break and stay for a while while we Stare At the Sun, won’t you?

“VAMPIRE BATS ARE VERY COMMONLY PICKLED”

Hanging out with scientists who think bats can help us live longer.

On a recent evening, biologist Emma Teeling uncorked a bottle of Irish single malt. The conference “Bats: New Models for Aging Research” had just concluded at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Banbury Center. Twenty thirsty biologists were gathered to toast, and decipher, the curiously long lives of chiroptera.

Behind her, the conference room’s immense blackboard bore a list of needs: “Which species?” “‘Bat-ize’ a mouse,” and “Cancer in bats—TEST.”

The field of comparative biology — studying how humans are different from or similar to, say, a bat — has been heating up since the late aughts, when the cost of sequencing an entire genome dropped from three billion dollars to less than a used car. Suddenly, with a skin cell sample and some funding, biologists could scrutinize the DNA blueprint of a naked mole rat (maximum lifespan: thirty-one years), Greenland shark (five hundred and twelve years), ocean quahog clam (five hundred and seven years), or, perhaps, a Brandt’s bat (forty-one years) and pinpoint the mechanisms or molecules keeping them salubrious rather than senile.

“Correcting for body size, bats are the most successful aging mammal in existence by a long shot,” said the conference’s co-organizer, Steven Austad. “We want to learn to make humans more successful at aging, too.”

Per the scientific method of mingling: Combine one part expertise and one part alcohol, and observe the results.

“This is my first time drinking to finish out a conference,” said Vishwa Deep Dixit, an immunobiologist from Yale, swirling his whisky happily.

Nancy Simmons, a Museum of Natural History curator, sipped her single malt. “You need to come to more bat meetings,” she said. “We drink tequila, because bats help fertilize agave.” 

Nearby, discussion turned to Bacardi, the rum company with a bat-silhouette logo and a bat center in Florida housing two hundred fruit bats. Could they be convinced to provide skin samples, or even donate a dead bat? 

“I have thirty thousand bats in alcohol at the museum,” Simmons said.

“Vampire bats are very commonly pickled,” said Gerald Wilkinson, a former dean at the University of Maryland.

Discussion turned to the oldest bat ever discovered. The male Brandt’s Bat, or myotis brandtii, was banded in 1962 and identified forty-one years later, still flapping.

“The man who found the forty-one-year-old said it didn’t look any different than a young bat,” Austad said.

Nearby, Teeling and several others huddled, debating which bat species would be best studied in a lab. “If we could get our husbandry right, I think myotis,” she said.

Felipe Sierra, a mustachioed Chilean from the National Institute of Health, spoke up. “It doesn’t necessarily need to be the longest-lived species. One of the most interesting transgenic animals is the beaverized-mouse.” At the next table over, Gorbunova, a beaver-ized mouse expert, nodded.

Simmons drifted to the chalkboard and drew what looked like a misshapen menorah—a phylogenetic tree of the species.

“The most recent ancestors of bats were whales or horses. Or maybe shrews or hedgehogs. Or pangolins,” Simmons said. “We just don’t know where it all started. There is ten million years missing from the fossil record, here,” she said, waving her drink at the menorah’s base, sixty-five million years ago.

“If you want answers, you need to find a fossil bed from sixty-two million years ago,” said Daniel Promislow, a systems biologist.

“Or even earlier,” Simmons said.

Teeling walked by. “Let’s not be picky,” she said.

Empty cups clattered, followed by the sudden silence common to parties when the keg kicks. Simmons surveyed the room. “None of us is young enough to go out tomorrow and band two hundred bats and see the results,” she said. “By the time they find out the data, we’re all gonna be dead.”

Teeling looked at her watch. A second cocktail hour was starting soon. “Let’s go for a drink,” she said, and the colony of biologists flitted off.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

THIS TINY RADIOACTIVE CAPSULE HAS HAD ENOUGH!

Dear UGSATS,

It’s me, the tiny radioactive capsule that was lost in the middle of the Australian Outback!

I know what you’re thinking: Whew, that guy is OK! Well you needn’t have worried. The press actually got the story wrong this whole time.

Common perception was that I, a 6mm x 8mm capsule full of Caesium-137 used in mining operations, fell off the back of a transport truck accidentally. That’d be the kind of needle in a haystack that you definitely don’t want to find.

But here’s the thing. THIS WASN’T AN ACCIDENT.

Look, I love the whole mining thing. And being a tiny radioactive capsule can be so rewarding. But there’s also a lot of pressure on me to execute my job — that is, being used as a radiation gauge to tell how dense material is in a mine — successfully.

And frankly, the way I was being treated in the workplace was, let’s just say, not up to my standards.

I’m not saying I’m a fully blown radioactive core, OK. But I’m not some speck of argon, either. I am a radiation gauge, goshdarnit, and I deserve to be treated like one.

So I admit, I got sick of it.

And yup. I jumped off the back of that truck. INTENTIONALLY.

And wouldn’t you know it, look who came chasing after me. Acting like I was the biggest deal in the world.

And yeah, sure I would’ve been fine just sitting there in the middle of the desert, irradiating kangaroos. But I have to say, I’m glad things worked out the way they did. I feel more appreciated than ever. I got my 15 minutes in the sun.

And I did irradiate a few kangaroos in the process, too, which was pretty cool.

New around these parts?

If this is your first Guide to Staring at the Sun,
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FARTING IN PUBLIC: A GUIDE

There exists among the modern general public of the Western world a shared theory that farting in public is gross.

We are not here to comment on that particular theory. (Don’t @ me.)

One potential solution to public farting is successful application of certain etiquettes and deceptions. Through careful study of a cohort n=3, we present data on the most effective and successful fart-discovery suppression techniques.

1. Burp while farting. Burps can exceed 80 decibels, while most farts fall between 2 and 55 decibels on average. Participants who drank seltzer or carbonated soda beverages showed notable aptitude at this technique.

2. Flee the room, prompting others to follow. One participant realized that quickly fleeing the room, even without reason, led others to panic and leave as well. This kept them from smelling their farts. But it also presented other challenges… Like having to explain to the dinner party why you just rushed out of the living room hollering “Go go go!!!”

3. Smelt it, then decided whether to dealt it. A surprising number of participants reported they were the first to smell their own fart. Often, farters were able to decide whether others would likely be able to smell their farts. Of note: several participants appeared to enjoy their own brand so much that their sense of what others might think was distorted. These “frequent dealers” received the most “gross” scores in peer review.

TILL NEXT TIME, GASBAGS!!!

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