 All right, everyone. I think that we will get started just with a couple introductions first. And I know I keep seeing people rolling into our webinar here. We're very pleased to have you. And we're also very happy for the partnerships between XPRIZE and the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. My name is Peter Hulahan. I am the technical lead of the Rainforest XPRIZE, and I'm really excited because over the next couple weeks, couple months, I'll be hosting what we're now calling Tropical Thursdays with staff from the Natural History Museum in LA. I'm having different conversations about natural history in terms of the tropics, but also on local levels. You know, we're all confined to our home offices and home schools and all of these different situations amidst the pandemic. And so it's both an opportunity for us to escape a little bit mentally and get to the outside world, but also as you'll see with Miguel tonight, there are many opportunities to still explore your own backyard and also be involved with citizen science, contributing to science in your own communities, where we can all be most impactful. So I'm just going to give a brief little introduction about myself before getting into this entire evening, which is all about Miguel and his phenomenal work in the LA area and abroad. He's done incredible work and you're going to be very excited. He's also shared some great photos and videos of his work around the world that you'll be excited to see. So, as I said, my name is Peter Hulahan. I'm the technical lead on the Rainforest XPrize. The Rainforest XPrize is a $10 million five-year competition to revolutionize the way that we study and survey tropical rainforest to improve the ways in which we can act and improve conservation of these threatened environments. And my personal background is specializing in expedition ops and tropical rainforests, coordinating logistics and access, facilitating permits and visas for teams of local scientists and experts to access very difficult to reach environments. And tropical rainforests are very demanding and challenging for a variety of reasons around the world. And so a big part of my work has been getting teams of local scientists and local communities to work together in serving tropical rainforest to work towards improving policy in those areas. I, like Miguel, started as a biologist studying all sorts of organisms in tropical rainforests, a little bit in coral reefs, but many topics from butterflies to a few topics that I'm really thrilled to hear from Miguel about tonight in terms of bats and big cats and other carnivores. So we'll be spanning quite a few topics and Miguel is really truly an expert in these aspects. And so, without further ado, I'll introduce our exciting first guest for Tropical Thursdays, Miguel Ordinana. And Miguel is the manager of Community Science at the LA Natural History Museum. He's been there since April of 2013 as an environmental educator and wildlife biologist. As a community science manager, Miguel promotes and creates community science projects and recruits and trains participants. He utilizes his mammal research background by conducting urban mammal research in LA and he co-leads the Natural History Museum of LA's Southern California Squirrel Survey, which you'll get to hear about tonight. There's some great photos to share. He also continues his work locally and internationally on carnivore and bat research, including a Jaguar project in Nicaragua. So what I'm really excited about is the flexibility of Miguel's experience and expertise. And really, I think tonight a key focus is all of these places, especially for myself. A lot of times these tropical environments feel so intangible. They're far away to travel to you. They're difficult to get to. But there are ways to communicate this work. And more importantly, there's ways to get involved on a local level to participate in your own communities and to be active in that way and contribute to science. And so with that, I really want to turn it over to Miguel to give a general overview, a little bit more of your current work. And then we're going to hit a few different projects from squirrels to bats to Jaguars and just go from there. And one last thing, as we get going, please add your questions. There's a Q&A function in the zoom window. So if you scroll over the bottom, a bar should pop up. And you can type your questions in the Q&A. And Miguel and I will answer those at the end or maybe a few along the way. So with that, it's a pleasure, Miguel. All right. Thanks, Peter. So yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. I grew up in Los Angeles, California. So it's really not just professionally exciting work and goals that I've met. By being able to do some of the work I've done, but also meeting a lot of personal goals of mine, kind of giving back to L.A.'s inspiring ecosystems in my own way through not just research, but also outreach and engagement with community members who otherwise are often disconnected from urban nature and see themselves separate from nature. And so I work at the Natural History Museum. And this is a place where people typically think about dinosaur fossils and beautiful diorama halls. And as a local to L.A. and going to this museum, that's kind of the message I got too at that time. And I would, I was really captivated by the diorama halls at the settings that were depicted there and would transport myself mentally to these places, like Africa, for instance. And but although I was inspired to care about these animals because of those beautiful exhibits and pursue conservation, I felt an aspect of conservation was intangible to me. And more specifically, because I grew up in Los Angeles and none of the wildlife or nature that I came across were represented at museums very well at all or at zoos. And so, and also on top of that the people that I would encounter randomly studying animals or educating people about these exhibits didn't look anything like me or any of my family members. And so even though I'm not too old, I think we've gotten a long way with regards to environmental education and research in urban areas. And I'm a big part of that effort here in Los Angeles. And so as far as my current projects, I kind of act as a liaison between research projects or scientists and curators that lead urban, urban wildlife projects and surveys and the public and the general public. And so I get the public engaged in this work through accessible programs, through trainings, through the use of technology, like the iNaturalist app. And sometimes using traditional tools that I would use in the tropics or in very wild places and trying them out in people's backyards. And their personal spaces to get not just the information that the scientists want or after, but also to connect the public with this type of science and these more elusive species on a very personal level because we're in their personal space. And so yeah, so that's kind of generally my role. And then some projects that I have ongoing right now is the Southern California Squirrel Survey, which is based on iNaturalist and is a project that involves getting the public to use an iNaturalist app, which is basically like Facebook or Instagram for nature nerds like myself. And instead of taking that photo and just uploading it to social media for your friends to see and like, the goal is to actually turn that photo into a data point and make it useful not only for engagement and education purposes but also for scientific research. And so by tagging these photos with a location date and time stamp, you're able to turn this beautiful photo of a western gray squirrel for instance or this fox squirrel into a valuable data plan. For the Southern California Squirrel Survey, like a lot of other projects in at the National Museum, our focus is to look at how the distribution has changed over time with these species and museums have been doing that for years. My museum is 100 years old and that's been what we've done with our collections is use these records, physical records to try and map out the historical distribution over time for different species. And now with the help of technology, we're able to kind of fill in some information gaps with the help of the public, which allows us to get more information, but also engages the public in this effort, which is important for them to feel involved and feel like they need to be better stewards of this environment. And so, so that's kind of the Squirrel Survey. Our goal is main focus is to map this turf war that's going on between the Eastern Fox Squirrel, which was imported from the Eastern United States by Civil War veterans. They brought them over either as pets or as food to West Sautel Veterans Home in West Los Angeles. And they were thought of as cute little animals at first, but then they're being fed table scraps. And because it was a government facility, they were thought of as using misappropriation of government funds. And so they had them all released. And they were tolerated for a while because they're a novel species to the area. But we had a big orchard industry at the time, and they're all of a sudden creating a lot of damage and economic loss. And so, but by the time they decided to get rid of these Fox Squirrels, it was too late. They didn't realize how prolific they were, how adaptable they were. These species reproduce twice a year. They're very bold. They eat about anything you can put out there for them, including they've stolen my sandwich before at lunchtime. So they're really feisty little animals. And we have two main native squirrel species, the California Ground Squirrel and the Western Gray Squirrel. And both of the California Ground Squirrel is native, but to the area. But it's also similarly very adaptable to the environment and eating eats a lot of different things, burrows in anything that's that's available and there's not too much cover overhead where raptors can hunt them. Western Gray Squirrels on their hand like this one here have lost their territory pretty quickly to urbanization mainly, but the Fox Squirrel introduction and expansion has really exacerbated that problem, because they're aggressive or they're pushing them out and displacing them from their original territory. And so the only place you can find the Western Gray Squirrel now in the LA Basin, which is usually be used to be one of their main stronghold is now Griffith Park. That's it. Otherwise you have to go to the San Gabriel Mountains, just north of an east of LA, or all the way west of west into the Western Santa Monica Mountains and so that's kind of the story that we're trying to investigate with the help of the community. And because the Fox Squirrel is so urban adapted. It's, it's crucial for the public to be involved and it's also I strategically chose this the study species because of all the mammals that still are around in LA. These are the only group of animal or mammals that are diurnal that are active during the day. So it makes this project more accessible for the general public, which is important for a community science project to be successful has to be accessible. Yeah. And so the other project I've gone, I've done a lot of camera trapping, which is kind of traditional research, including on the LA River. Like you see here, we did a monitoring of the river to look at the potential of the LA River for as habitat for wildlife because there is there are goals. For restoring a lot of this river to its more and more natural state, and we want to know what would happen if that were the case what's there now, and what what how this situation can be improved with restoration so I put camera traps out there. We got wildlife and all this was very inspiring. During the squirrel survey, doing this more traditional urban carnivore research with motion activated cameras was something that I, I never really thought about doing in the middle of LA, even though I grew up there and I kind of knew the area pretty well. I considered this type of work work that we needed that had to be done outside of the city. And so, for me to engage us in this work and be successful at it was very inspiring for me. So toting around a camera trap in the middle of LA will get you a lot of weird looks by people setting this up in places where people aren't even thinking about wildlife. But it's payoff because you get some really engaging photos and videos from that and really make people think differently about their urban or natural surroundings once they know what's roaming around at night when they're asleep. And so that as I mean really inspired me to look even deeper within the urban core, which I've done with the squirrel survey for instance. And also now through the backyard bat survey which is my main project right now which is another community science project where we're using acoustic monitoring devices. To study where wildlife is I would see me where bats are distributed within LA's urban core. And what's crucial about this is, I mean, again, it's very strategically chosen because first of all have expertise studying setting bats with acoustic monitoring. It's a handy tool handy skill to have because these species. Navigate in darkness communicate in darkness with echolocation or sonar is another word for it and which is using high pitch sound to be able to get a mental picture of what's in yours in front of you in pitch black darkness instead of using your eyes to see using ultrasonic sound to see and navigate in space and so this made this type of work accessible just having that technology at my disposal and using these species specific calls to be able to identify species rather than having to rely on capturing bats or taking photographs of them, which would have made the job a lot easier and almost nearly impossible in very urban areas and so having this technology that again, a lot of people using the tropics and places where they expect to see bats. It was useful to have these little microphones to put up in people's backyards. And we made some amazing discoveries such as this bat here is a Western red bat, and it's a migratory species that was thought to kind of skip over LA because unlike other bats that can roost sometimes under bridges or in people's roots this particular bat species a part of a genius called the zeurus that roost in foliage, primarily and almost exclusively so the fact that elias so urban and we lost a lot of our tree cover that would have been that roosting habitat. And so we thought meant that they were gone they're not going to use LA anymore and so to find this bat in the middle of our nature gardens at our museum and our museum is in south Los Angeles which is very very urban and south of downtown LA. And so to find this bat detected in this tiny little garden within this urban matrix was really exciting and so to take it to the next level. We started going to people's backyards because if you can find it in an urban garden. What else is out there what else is in these other neighborhoods so we partnered with these family members like you see here many more than this. They were thrilled to be part of an effort to engage with the museum first of all and have that unique interaction but they also were integral at our success at figuring out what species were here what was possible. We studied over 40 sites within the past three years and every single site has detected at least one species of bat and even myself as a bat biologist. I didn't even expect that to be the case I thought maybe some neighborhoods yes but especially very urban neighborhoods which is what we've been focusing on would be absent of bats even the most urban adapted bats like the Mexican Frito about and so here's another great example so here's of a this is a Hori bat very similar to the red bat as far as its behavior it's a migrant friend goes from southern Canada all the way down to Central America every year and back and again. Only recent foliage same the same genus as the Western red bat and so to all of a sudden we detected it just a few months prior to this photo at our museum in the gardens again. And then a few months later around Christmas someone one of our staff members just happened to spot it on our wall. Within our gardens and what was exciting about this opportunity was that not only did where people not afraid when they saw this bat and and just perplexed they're actually excited and had some background information about this bat and knew exactly its ecological role service and function within LA. And because they're educators on staff is the perfect opportunity to connect the general public that we're still in the gardens at that point with this bat and so one of our educators brought out a spotting scope and gathered as many people as you could to check out this this rare bat within the middle of LA. And so that was just a really great opportunity and this is another great story where I went to USC for my undergrad and I've been a big football fan of this school since I was a little boy and still am and so I took my I went with my family to a football game but because I'm also a bat nerd I had a little bat detector in my pocket. And in case there is a bat and so I was watching the game my little brother was like Miguel there's mods getting eaten by bats at the stadium lights. And I was like yeah that makes sense that mods would be there but bats in the middle of this football game with the marching band going and everything. And sure enough I looked up and there were bats zigzagging up and around those lights and eating mods. And because of that little bat detector I stood up and blocked the view of the people behind me and started recording bats. And because I had this really cool device I was able to figure out right then and there what species were flying overhead. And I think this is where I feel like the next step is for community science because yes this is a really weird situation and I'm sure that's what you would think too if I started blocking your view of a football game to listen for bats. But my goal is as this technology gets cheaper more accessible and more people are knowledgeable or know where that bats are here that they're important. Then hopefully one day they'll be a huge stadium full of people with these devices in their pockets and always looking not just at the football game but what other wildlife are sharing this space with them. And that even though they're at a football game doesn't mean they're separated from nature. And I think that's just a small example of what our museum and our programs are trying to spread is that type of awareness. And also going to these communities so this is a community event in Watts California very urban part of South Central LA was very park poor and here's also a school in Watts. And I was putting detectors at the school had the opportunity to talk to the students about the bats I was detecting at their school, but also did community events like the when you saw before, which takes it to another level so instead of me showing off some of the more sexier animals like mountain lions and bobcats and getting people to touch pelts, what they actually gravitated more towards were bats that I was telling them I was detecting blocks away or right over their head above this classroom, because it made that story more personal to them, especially in neighborhoods where they felt that they were disconnected from nature. And that really nature, and this type of work is not for them because of that and so I felt it was empowering for me as an educator and a scientist but also hopefully inspiring for them and gave them the access to nature that they deserve through this process and here. Yeah, that's a Horry bat in flight if you just that's just a really cool shot that that is a map of. Yeah, so yeah it's a really good photographer that took a picture that Horry bat mid flight and then this map is really cool because it's kind of a snapshot of what we're finding generally in LA which is that bats are being detected everywhere so the bigger the circle you see there. The, the more activity there is at that particular site the darker the circle, the more species and so it's as simple as that. This map here is showing all the detector sites that we've had over the years. So far, we're going to add 20 more pretty soon in South LA, and every single bat, excuse me location like I said, detected a bat, which is amazing and as a huge statement for us to share about wildlife and urban wildlife and their resiliency. And the fact that we've found four species of special concerns species that were thought to not only be rare, not even exist in urban areas but rare in California, we're finding in the middle of the city. So just by looking, it's not really trying to boast myself as this really innovative scientists but more so that you just have to be opportunistic you have to look where people are just avoiding and not taking the time to look and partnering with the communities, even if it's a little bit more logistically complicated. It's worth the payoff, not just for the species discoveries, but also the engagement that you're able to do and so here's the representative 12 species that we've detected over the past three and a half years, four of which, like I said, our species of special concern, one of which I just had detected a couple years prior. This is the Western Mastiff bat, the biggest bat in North America, and that bat was thought to be extinct for 10 years to myself and the Forest Service detected it at the LA Zoo in Griffith Park. And so, so yeah, those are just really inspiring stories that, that make this type of work successful in a lot of different ways and here I am climbing a ladder to put up a bat detector above a gymnasium at a school, very close to the South LA. So yeah, so this is kind of going backwards in time a little bit, but this, this story is always current and relevant. And so, like I said, I grew up outside of Griffith Park, which is the home of the Hollywood line, observatory, the LA Zoo, and not really a place that people think about as a place for urban oasis for wildlife, but it is. And I grew up using the park as, as, as a lot of other urban kids to be honest, even though it is this amazing wildlife oasis, a lot of people aren't aware of that my family included at the time. And so I would go there to play, play catch with my family have a barbecue or a quinceanera, maybe go for a hike but for exercise not to identify plants or animals. And so, but nonetheless there are animals like coyotes and skunks and, and etc that were roaming through my neighborhood because of our proximity to the park, and fast forward a few years, coming back to LA on a mission to study carnivores in this park to give back in my own way I end up discovering a mountain lion and his name is P 22, which stands for Puma 22 in the middle of this park that I grew up going to that I never imagined would have a mountain lion in it someday. And I didn't even know what a bobcat was or a western gray squirrel was as a kid even though they were there. And so this photo is really this story is really inspiring to me because this animal this individual crossed two major freeways the 405 freeway and then went through Beverly Hills Bel Air and close to Hollywood, he crossed the 101 freeway another eight lane freeway to cross into Griffith Park. And he's the first mountain lion to ever be recorded doing that. And Griffith Park is a big park is one of the biggest parks in this in the country, bigger than Central Park. But it's a fraction of the size of what a regular male mountain lion would need for its territory so usually a male would need about 200 square miles, and Griffith Park is only nine square miles. And the fact that he stayed there and being able to coexist with people like thousands of people go through that park every day. And there hasn't been an incident with a human. Eight years later he's still going strong. It's a pretty amazing story and very inspiring to a lot of people it's a story of survival, which a lot of people can resonate with. And Miguel, if I'm, if I remember correctly that also contributed to an overpass or something that. Exactly yeah so he's not just an ambassador for urban wildlife and la wildlife but he's also ambassador for our very imperiled mountain lion population here in the Southern California area that are basically almost going extinct and it's estimated within 50 years they will go extinct. If connectivity habitat connectivity is not improved. And so there's a campaign for many, many years to build a bridge across the one on one connecting the Santa Monica mountains to the Santa Susana mountains to the north of the one on one freeway. But it's been unsuccessful because nobody was really rallying behind mountain lions at that point. Or really understood the importance and significance of it, but all of a sudden this P 22 story came out in the news and that Hollywood photo this photo went viral. And now there's celebrities that are talking about P 22. And he's this amazing wildlife celebrity that is really carrying this campaign, which is the save LA Cougars campaign. It's run by the National Wildlife Federation and so it's amazing to see how just a simple engaging story can really save a population potentially amongst other things. Totally. That was that's awesome. I'd love to, we just covered you just covered a lot of different topics for the huge spectrum of work that that you are involved with both throughout LA and around the world. And I'd love to just start I have a few questions a few comments of different aspects of your work that maybe we can discuss for the audience. A lot of it in terms of the technology is something that I think from an X prize perspective we're really interested in right now in terms of innovating tech and getting it in the hands of people around the world to survey biodiversity like you've been talking about Can you go a little bit more into detail about. I know we touched on camera traps in those images we have GPS collars on cats, the audio recorders, and even I naturalist I know that you throughout all of your work or kind of at an interface of many different forms of tech that are being utilized to collect data on these animals and I'd love to hear a little bit more about any aspect of the trials and tribulations of working with tech in the field. Just any of this that I'd love to go back and forth with. Yeah, sure. So technology is man made right so there's always mistakes that are made or things aren't just made efficiently or meant for the field or every single environment. So that's one. We're using technology, especially new technology in the field. And so that's always an ongoing thing and it's always getting better which is exciting and inspiring. So the first technology that I was introduced to were camera traps and when I started with camera traps they're actually film camera traps. And it was just this crazy idea and they were super expensive and clunky and you have to wait a while like for your film to get back from the photo studio to see what you got. And eventually it turned into digital but and then also the there was white flash it was an infrared flash so white flash is just the regular flash that you use on your camera. It's a home or personal camera as a big flashy bulb. And we've learned that for some species that is a deterrent and and they've developed infrared flash since then which is basically sometimes visible to wildlife still but not as spooky as as a big white flash. And so they even made it darker now that's almost invisible to wildlife depending on the type of flash but so that's one investment also the integration of video into camera traps. That was something that happened while I was kind of moving along in my career and also really key at now seeing behavior that you're unable to see just with a simple photo with those photos you're able to kind of get evidence that the animal is there count some spots if it was individually identifiable by their spot or pelt pattern. But beyond that bobcats and jaguars are examples or tigers even our examples that each one has identifiable markings like a fingerprint. But beyond that you wouldn't be able to say much about his behavior unless like he was carrying a prey item in its mouth at that point in time and you can get a good look at it and see oh these animals actually feed on this species and we never knew that. But for the most part, it's hard to see behavior without video. So that was a huge advancement that has happened. Made it accessible. Yeah, more accessible. And then same. Similarly, here's an example of a GPS collar. This is a replica exact replica of what is around P 22 neck. Here's a satellite transmitter. Here's a battery. And when I started in this field of work. I was also helping study urban bobcats in Irvine California which is in Orange County. And we had to use telemetry and that's still with an antenna we use a radio signal to locate that cat with triangulation. And it's still done today as like usually a backup or a cheaper alternative to GPS collar technology. But now with GPS collars, you basically can get eight points a day without sending anybody into the field. And they're very accurate and telling and these collars now this one particular can last about two years without having to drug the animal and stress it out. More often than you need to. To has come such a long way in terms of the camera trapping from the trail cams that are still the least expensive to SLR cameras. And even camera trapping on smaller scales for even bats and insects and all sorts of things like that but the GPS trackers as well. Because of the size limitations of what they used to have to weigh in order to transmit this data. Now those are I mean we're putting telemetry and by GPS trackers on you know dragon flies and things like that and tracking them from satellites so it's pretty remarkable in even just the past five or 10 years the scale at which you know a lot of the things that you're talking about. Even with P 22 these bigger animals could outfit some of these larger pieces of equipment, and now we're able to basically surveil a lot more biodiversity in a much more intimate way in real time, gathering all these different data points. Consistently, but also like you say with the video I mean some of the behavioral aspects that we're able to see of how individuals interact sometimes. It's crazy, I mean it's crazy seeing some of the footage that comes out or. And it's remarkable. I know we have a couple questions I'd love to bring up one, and people feel free to add questions in here and we'll address them as we go along and also at the end. But we have a question of that seem to get such a bad rap. What is something that you find fascinating about them that you wish more people knew. I think we both have plenty to talk about on this one. Yeah, I can go on for a long time but I'll keep it to a few points but I'll talk about LA specifically or in general bats. Basically make over 20% of the mammal species on earth, which is an amazing number most of those individuals live in the tropics. And so, and most of them are insect eating animals, and by being insect eating animals. They provide huge services to us from a safety health health standpoint, and also economic standpoint and so, for instance, for the fact that they eat crop pests for instance is a huge service to our agriculture industry and saves them, I think on average about $3 billion a year, because they're saving on the cost of using pesticides, or just the loss of their crops and obviously what that does for us is helps our economy makes those vegetables and fruit cheaper at the grocery store for us. If they're not so rare, but also there's other bats like fruit bats like the flying fox, which are seed dispersers because they eat these tropical fruits out in the Philippines or Australia or India, and are more willing than bats, more willing than birds to fly over clear cut areas. And by doing that, they're spreading the seeds and regenerating forests, more so than birds are. And so that's an important service they're providing that way. And also, because a lot of some of them are eating mosquitoes or a lot of our eating mosquitoes. That is helping us as well mosquitoes are annoying. But also they're the most dangerous animal in the world because they kill the most people, because of all the diseases that they potentially carry. And so having these bats around is keeping us safe and it's itchy. And so that's that's a really great thing to think about when you're grossed out by a bat and you got to kind of think about, where does that stem from is it because of a Dracula movie you saw someone told you that vampire bats are everywhere. And to be specific, I mean about vampire bats vampire bats in LA don't exist. They are south of the border, they're Mexico, Central America, Latin America, and only one of those species of vampire bats feeds on feeds on mammal blood. Other ones feeds on bird blood. And, and I think that's something to think about even the one that feeds on mammal blood is going after livestock primarily that's left out in the open. Yeah, it's not it's not they're not the vicious scary animals that people think they are they're not going in the people's hair getting tangled on purpose. I don't know why that's a common thing to ask but and yeah they're not aggressive animals. I think a lot of it for many people is, you know, you see this with a lot of animals that are active at night that people don't see as well. And so it is interesting all the all the ways in which you can use audio recorders and things like that to to learn about them and then the ways that you're interacting with communities in LA to show people what bats are in the neighborhood. Yeah, helps to bridge this gap of, you know, it's similar things to like sharks and other stuff that it's really related to a lack of understanding that instills this fear and I mean, to be honest, a lot of people when they actually see photos of bats up close like some of the ones that we flipped through tonight, they're they're adorable. Like people if you took just the profile shot of a bats face people would think they're like bulldog or a pug or something like that. But also they're fascinating so like what you mentioned about the diversity bats in the in the tropics. I mean, in the tropics especially they're more than half of the mammal species and that in itself has driven all sorts of other diversification there's such a strong force of predation in the night sky. And that's what my work on bats was was about predator prey interactions between bats and insects, and studying how, how many insects have evolved specifically to escape bats. So insects have evolved ears to hear echolocation and mechanisms to jam echolocation, just to escape and even, I mean like some of our research pointed to the likelihood of butterflies evolving from mobs out of the night sky just to escape this year. And so there are all these rippling effects, certainly, you know, pollination what you said about crops and everything like that. They provide all these functions that we don't even have any idea because they're out there at night when, and, and communicating largely out of our audible spectrum. So, a lot of it's misunderstanding, and when you actually start to get to know them, you will, you'll fall in love. Maybe we'll see. They also pollinate for those interested agave which is an important product in some. There you go. Let me see a few more questions here. What are ways to protect to help protect bats around urban areas. Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it is advocacy, to be honest. People can put bat boxes up for instance and provide extra habitat for them and but even the most perfect settings and setups, it can take about three years for them to occupy those, those boxes, not using pesticides on your plants. Using native plants that attract native insects that they feed upon that's helpful and talking to your city about that you want bats around that you don't want everybody to consistently be cutting down old trees and trimming trees. And especially when it's pumping season, when they're the most vulnerable, a lot of another misconception about bats is that they're these prolific animals that reproduce like rabbits that short live there's plenty to go around. And it's not the case they basically have the life history of a large mammal and they're long live they can reach up to 30 or 40 years in age, reproduce about once a year and usually it's one to two pups a year. And, and so for all those reasons, makes them very vulnerable to being extirpated from an area. And if you're cutting down a tree and wipe out an entire roost, then that's a huge chunk of the population that you just eradicated from that area. And so, I don't know, I just think thinking about changing your mindset and what's, like, bouncing what's aesthetically pleasing to what's good for ecosystem what's good for environment and keeping it in balance. There's a lot of research coming out now about noise and light pollution, and the impacts of like of these aspects of our own existence in more densely populated areas. And, you know, things like that do suffer more than others because they are somewhat in many ways out of sight out of mind. And so, but you see, you know, a lot of migratory pathways of birds and bats and even insects being altered by urban areas now because of noise and light pollution. So, thank you. Yeah, those are some great questions. Another one, another question in here growing up in Austin we loved Oh, I'm guessing it's going to be about that bridge in Austin as a Congress bridge. Growing up in Austin we loved our bats but still had a fear of rabies. How likely is an LA bat to spread rabies. I'm not going to say it doesn't exist because rabies has been detected in bats within LA County, but it's not common. And yeah, and so rabies is a deadly disease for bats. And so, so it's not like they're going to be flying freely and carrying that disease and living forever as these dangerous transmitters of that disease and and also there's a fear with the stats exactly where but the CDC did a did a study on bats that rabies like symptoms and only a small fraction, I think between 5 and 10% of those bats had rabies and so the likelihood of a bat having rabies is very slim. But I definitely wouldn't recommend picking up a bat off the ground or anything like that. But, but yeah, I think for the most part you're, you're definitely safe. Yeah, very low. Besides those of us who physically handle them regularly and have to get your titers checked all the time and get your roosters for rabies vaccines. It's very minimal. But I would say on this note that the time that we're in now with the pandemic is actually getting and terrifying in terms of the how prolific the impacts of environmental degradation are on humanity now and and something like COVID-19 has certainly been tied to in ways wildlife trafficking and zoonotic diseases and so at some point it's likely that it was passing through bats in some way that never would have interacted with humans had there not been opening up of tropical forests that expose them to wildlife trafficking that expose them to wildlife markets and became came in close proximity to dense urban populations that were actually in consumption and things like that. So there are all these sequential steps of our as a species misuse of resources and the environment that are actually exposing us to more of these things that you know like rabies. Yeah, it's always there but there are these other things that you know we're dealing with on a global scale right now that are dangerous warning signs not even warning signs dangerous realities of where we are at because of a lack of sufficient management of environmental resources around the world. Definitely. I think I mean, another thing that we try to do at the museum is this focus on not just the benefits, but how exciting it is to have nature around you and to explore it. And, and so, yes it's good to be knowledgeable about the risks of or dangers of wildlife, but for the most part it's good to know that it's important to have nature around and all the benefits of it from mental health to having a balanced ecosystem, or even property value benefits if that's what you prioritize and so I think ways we can engage people and using our creativity not to destroy habitat and figure out ways to get really rare species out of forests that they depend on but use that creativity to engage people on a different level. For instance, we have a competition called the city nature challenge where we're getting people that weren't thinking about nature or exploring nature ever in their lives, but are doing it for the first time, because they happen to like competition. They like to compete. And now they're avid naturalists because that was their way in. And it's important to figure out easier creativity to meet people where they're at and make this work relevant. And so if it's relevant to them, then there's more likelihood that they'll be stewards and encourage their communities to be stewards of these populations. Absolutely. We're to bring it full circle there. I think so many aspects of this are actually I think coming back to the forefront. It's an interesting aspect of you mentioned mental health. People are realizing through the lockdown that we're in now. You know, I think prior to that, you and I have our own relationship with nature now. But the majority of, I think, the human population, many people especially are used to the conveniences of everything being able to be delivered or not having to go out of your home to have access to the whole world. And it has impacts in terms of not being being exposed to the outdoors. And I think what I've seen just, you know, through interactions with people over zoom is a lot of people realizing the importance of that that I think I certainly live in such a bubble of that is critical to my entire existence in terms of everything I do, but it's good to see that being valued and prioritized in the ways that it is now and certainly I think one one aspect of all of this is for people to know that through the LA Natural History Museum through the work that you're doing. People can get involved with with citizen science actually contribute to data collection, especially through. If you want to if you want to say a couple more words just about the I naturalist program that you're working on because that's a brilliant way to connect with nature. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, as an example I'll talk about sorry to talk about the school survey I'll talk about the city nature challenge a little bit more where it started off as a simple competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. And now there's hundreds of cities all over the world involved. And every year it's a competition who what city can find the most wildlife or recruit the most observers within a week period. And this year, because of COVID-19. We had to change gears switch gears and but it was is really helpful to see how people responded to this challenge and instead of making it a competition is more of a celebration of slowing down being more aware of your natural surroundings and And sharing what you have to inspire others and make someone else's life or day a little bit better by sharing a photo that you found in your backyard your personal space, or even within your own house or apartment. And I think it makes people feel less lonely when we can do things like that with each other, but also encourage people to care more about wildlife and making it easy for them and accessible by having it on a really easy to use app. That's free to download allows people to contribute to science and explore and engage with nature like they never did before. And I think that's something that everybody should celebrate and just being more aware and slowing down and and I mean life is can go by quickly and with the pandemic. It's, it's easy to kind of focus on all the negative things but because you're slowing down a little bit because there's not much you can do in this situation. Unfortunately, you also have opportunity to be aware of things that you didn't really take notice of before or felt like that weren't part of your everyday life, but really are and just been right under your nose this whole time. Absolutely. And then on our end I mean I would just say on an international scale this is branching out of the local level where I think the most impact can always be made. But XPRIZE through the rainforest XPRIZE is is doing a lot of work around the globe, working with local NGOs, local universities, local researchers in our rainforest XPRIZE to deploy novel technologies to incentivize the innovation and advancement of a lot of the tech that Miguel you mentioned tonight I mean over the past 10 years how all of those different aspects of tech have improved. That needs to continue improving but also get in the hands of more and more people in communities around the world. And so just scaling all of this up on a global level because there really isn't time remaining in terms of a lot of the environmental and social issues that we face currently around the world and so through the rainforest XPRIZE we're really working to revolutionize the movement in that respect of more rapidly and remotely autonomously being able to survey and document rainforest to involve inform conservation action and policy in real time and so for anybody listening more information from that can be found at rainforest XPRIZE.org And Miguel it's really really been a pleasure chatting with you tonight. I'm looking forward to this whole series with the LA Natural History Museum, but honestly I love your work. Thank you for sharing some great images. And also thank you for what you do I mean everybody that is listening. I think XPRIZE and the LA Natural History Museum are in the same general neighborhood and so there are a lot of opportunities to get involved on many different scales through both organizations and so it's a very exciting time to get involved. And with new initiatives when we are so confined in our locations but thanks again for sharing so much about your work and the impact of your work and the importance of it to to so many communities. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Take care. Thanks everybody for joining.