Holy bumblebee, Robin

My correspondent P keeps up with general science much better than me. At the end of September, she flagged up a Nature press release about the latest submission from the Bat1k Project. Bats are important and diverse: 20% of all mammalian species are members of Order Chiroptera. Only rodents are more 'speciose' (25% of the ~5,000 known species). There is a whiff of marmite about both taxa: most people are squikked out by bats or rats or both but enthusiasts are really enthusiastic. Take Gdau.II, for example: she's 10 and mad about Capybaras Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris the largest rodent known to science, but she survives by keeping 2 surrogate guinea-pigs Cavia porcellus in a pen in a corner of the living-room at home. Cavies (1kg) and capybaras (50kg) are in the same family, who knew?Another example is Emma Teeling, a zoology Professor at UCD, who is making it her life's work to get more attention and more money for research into bats.Teeling is the Last=Lead author on a recent chunky…