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Every spring, when the mosquitoes start to get overwhelming, the bats show up in the rafters of my rural porch. They fly like kamikaze pilots – you can’t miss them as they start feasting on all those bugs at dusk, and I occasionally wonder if they’re going to miss me when they zoom by.
It turns out, these fuzzy little mammals are valuable for much more than just mosquito control.
Agriculture economist Dale Manning of the University of Tennessee and colleagues Anya Nakhmurina and Eli Fenichel of Yale tracked how the value of bat behavior cascades through the economy, all the way to the bond market.
It’s a fascinating look at the importance of these creatures, and what happens to farms, county budgets and the wider economy when a spreading illness starts to kill them.
In yesterday’s newsletter, we included an old affiliation for the author of the piece “We tested the new World Cup ball – this is what you need to know about how it will fly, dip and swerve.” It should have read “University of Puget Sound.”
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A healthy bat hangs in a cave, resting up to eat its weight in bugs at dusk.
Liz Hamrick/TVA
Dale Manning, University of Tennessee; Anya Nakhmurina, Yale University; Eli Fenichel, Yale University
When bats disappear, farms become less productive, and that has broad implications far beyond the crops.
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Ethics + Religion
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Ryan Leack, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
What should we call the words that this ultramodern technology produces? For clues, a professor looks to some of the world’s earliest authors.
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Arts + Culture
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Jessica Maddox, University of Georgia; Krysten Stein, University of Cincinnati
As TikTok invests in short-form scripted series, it’s leaning into the same storytelling, advertising and viewing habits that defined television.
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