A reporter from the Trinidadian press contacted me for this story. I feel like I have told it too many times. Hopefully, this will be the last time, and now I can just refer people to this blog post! First some background-- The last week of June I helped my labmate Danielle Adams with her … Continue reading The story of “How I almost died in Trinidad”

Finally! The bad news is that there are only 7 bats, rather than the 15 for which I was waiting, or the 30 for which I was hoping. Still, after 4 years of persistent effort, it feels nice to have any sort of success at getting bats into our lab. The population of vampires at Organization for … Continue reading Vampires arrive on campus

Micah Miles Third year, Banneker-Key Scholar, concentration in Wildlife Ecology and Management I fell in love with animals at a very young age though dozens of wildlife documentaries, volumes of nature books, and copious visits to the National Zoo. As an Environmental Science and Policy major I seek to better understand the ways in which … Continue reading Our new undergraduate research assistants

I'm giving 3 public outreach talks in the Detroit area of Michigan this weekend. Scientific adventures with vampire bats - Friday 9/28/12, Southfield Public Library, 6pm. Info Bat behavior: tales from the field and lab- Saturday 9/28/12, Great Lakes Bat Festival. "The goal of the 11th Annual Great Lakes Bat Festival is to spread the … Continue reading Outreach talks in Michigan this weekend

The vampire bat project has two recent appearances in the press: The Scientist and The Examiner. I just returned from the Conference of Ford Fellows, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary this year. My research is supported by a large number of individual donors and organizations. But my living stipend of $1666/month is provided by the Ford Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental organization established by … Continue reading A Thank You to the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program

We sent out our first paper on food sharing for peer-review. Fingers crossed. In the study, we revisit the original findings on reciprocal food sharing in vampire bats and address 4 alternative evolutionary explanations of food sharing in light of new data from 53 nights over 2 years when we induced food sharing in a … Continue reading Paper on food sharing submitted

A few updates: 1. I've started building the flight cage to house the vampire bats and I've identified places where we can get cow blood near campus. 2. Our first small publication related to this project is scheduled to be published in about a week. It's a study on the complexity of the contact calls … Continue reading Ten fundraising days left on Petridish.org

I just learned that the young and brilliant bat researcher Bjorn Siemers died less than a week ago. These last few years have been a string of sadness for both bats and bat research. First there was the discovery of the massive death of bats at wind farms. As I was finishing college, it was … Continue reading A sad time for bats and bat biologists

Here's the link: http://www.petridish.org/projects/evolution-of-cooperation-in-vampire-bats The vampire bats are arriving soon. But we do not know yet whether we will be getting a large grant from the National Science Foundation. That means I will be in charge of all animal care at least until next year. Combining animal care with experiments and observations will be a … Continue reading Supporting our vampire bats through crowdfunding