A tour of the bat cave

In this video for Science Friday, bat biologist Nickolay Hristov takes a thermal camera inside Carlsbad Caverns to see what bats do in the dark when nobody's watching.

In his footage, a blazing yellow blob on the cave ceiling—which the video's narrator likens to a pool of lava—is actually a mass of bats, packed closely together and hanging upside down. Here, Hristov can see, in person, the very social world of bats, playing out as though he weren't even there.

It's a great video, and well worth watching.

Via Science Friday

EDIT: Video embed is fixed and should work now.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: bats • behind the scenes • Science • secrets

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

http://www.facebook.com/people/Byron-Hulcher/1227720427 Byron Hulcher

Visiting your homepage or this article causes Google Chrome to automatically begin downloading a 100MB mp4 file!
- Jirka Lahvicka
  
  Same problem here, also using Google Chrome…
- fungstyle
  
  yep, mine too. not cool.
http://www.lamidesign.com/plans lava

“—which the video’s narrator likens to a pool of lava—”

That’s not just “the video’s narrator” – that is Flora, Science Friday’s Video Editor. We love Flora.
Jupiter Jones

Firefox here with an obnoxious autoplaying video.
http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

It should be fixed now, you guys. On my Chrome it’s not autoplaying or downloading anything now. Let me know if you’re still getting bad results as of 10:30 am central.
http://twitter.com/the_damned_fool the damned fool

I’m using Safari and I’m seeing a video saying that if acquire a microscope I can go on a Safari in my own home.
- http://twitter.com/the_damned_fool the damned fool
  
  Still cool, and SciFri and all, but not a lot in the video about bats though.