美国国家公共电台 NPR Bats And Tequila: A Once Boo-tiful Relationship Cursed By Growing Demands

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Now this Halloween story about bats and spirits - not spooky spirits. We're talking tequila. NPR's Neda Ulaby went to a Mexican bar in Washington, D.C., to research the connection between bats and booze.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE 1: It's a Halloween happy hour hosted by the head of a group called Bat Conservation International.

MIKE DAULTON: And we're here at a bar tonight to talk about them because they are intimately tied to agave.

ULABY: Agave, the spiky 2 desert plant used to make mezcal, tequila and, by extension, the delicious looking margarita someone's offering me right now.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: There you go.

ULABY: You can't have tequila without agave. And it's hard to have agave without bats, says Mike Daulton. He runs the Bat Conservation Group. And he says industrial agave farming affects both the plants and the bats that pollinate them.

DAULTON: The tequila industry has seen 60 percent growth in the last 10 years. At the super-premium level, where you're spending $30 a bottle or more, it's more like 400 percent growth. And so that means you have to grow a lot of agave.

ULABY: And the problem with that - well, let Micaela Jemison explain. She also works for Bat Conservation International. And she's adorned 3 appropriately in bat-themed jewelry 4.

MICAELA JEMISON: So a lot of the agaves that we make tequila from are actually clones of each other. They're not actually naturally pollinated. The...

ULABY: They're clones?

JEMISON: Yeah. They're pretty much clones of each other.

ULABY: Growing genetically 7 identical plants is easy and cheap for a big tequila company, but they're vulnerable. Fungus 8 or disease could wipe them all out. Bats are the answer. Jemison says three kinds of bats create genetic 6 diversity in agave by mixing up their pollen 9.

JEMISON: The Mexican long-nosed bat, the lesser 10 long-nosed bat and the Mexican long-tongued bat.

ULABY: Notice a bit of a theme? There's a kind of pollinating bat that has a tongue longer than its body.

JEMISON: You think how would it fit in its mouth?

ULABY: Yes, how?

JEMISON: It actually has to roll its tongue up in the back of its throat to fit it all in.

ULABY: Consider that when planning your next Halloween costume. Jemison says these bats need Gene 5 Simmons-esque (ph) tongues when they hover 11 over fertile agave stems stuffed with pollen.

JEMISON: And use their long tongues to actually dig into the flower and get out that really awesome 12 nectar for them to eat. So they actually literally 13 get their heads covered in this pollen. And as they're going from agave plant to agave plant, they're pollinating them at the same time.

ULABY: If you want to hear cocktail 14 chatter 15 about bats, this is the place. Bats have bellybuttons. They're the second-largest group of mammals in the world. People here drinking take bats very seriously. Joaquin Meza is part of a group called the Tequila Interchange Project that tries to make tequila production more bat-positive. Growing up in Mexico, he says he never thought of bats as anything but...

JOAQUIN MEZA: Evil, scary creatures. You know, I saw a bat, and I wanted to run away. And now it's - I understand the work they do like bees.

ULABY: Now Meza wants to convince tequila producers to create bat-friendly labels, putting, if you will, a little boo back in booze. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

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