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Bats, Bones and Biology

Content Info | Transcript

Are there vampire bats waiting to drink your blood? Do we have a funny bone in our body? These are just a few of the things Dr. Biology and his guests Rebecca Fisher and Elizabeth Hagen talk about on this show. You can even listen to some real bat chatter.

MP3 download | 15MB

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Topic Time
Intro 00:00
Do bats drink blood and what do they eat? [vampire bats] 02:18
Bat size. [Bumblebee and Flying Fox bats] 04:11
Are bats blind? 05:29
How do bats navigate at night? [echo location] 05:53
Ultrasonic sounds 07:05
Listen to two bat call sounds - 07:31
Can other animals hear bat calls? 09:34
Why do we need bats? What would the world be like with bats? 09:48
How many kinds of bats are there in the world? 10:25
One of the stranger looking bats. 10:33
What's different about bat skeletons and why are they the only mammals that fly? 11:08
What do our bones do for us? 13:15
What does a paleontologist do? 15:17
What's the largest bone or skeleton you have studied? 16:00
What is the largest bone of any animal? 16:46
What's the smallest bone of any animal? 17:14
Do we have a funny bone? 18:13
Easy way to remember how many bones are in the adult human skeleton. 19:44
What happened to all the extra bones we have when we are born? [cartilage and bond - connective tissue] 20:17
What is cartilage and what is bone? 22:35
What does it take to have really strong bones? [milk - dairy - vitamin D] 23:26
Three questions - when did you first know you wanted to be a scientist? 24:04
What would you do or be if you could not be a biologist? 26:15
What advice do you have for someone wanting to be a biologist? 27:25
Sign-off - Bat article - Yo-Yo Skeleton coloring page 29:38

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Bats, Bones and Biology

Audio editor: Charles Kazilek

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