(Ro)bat swarms in Austin

We didn’t want to miss out on Dr Yeubing Zheng story just because he wouldn’t be in town when we were, so we interviewed him before he left - that episode is about microscopic robots that move together like schooling fish and is fascinating and coming out soon. But fish aren’t the only animals that move in complex formations. Austin is home to Dr Zheng and also to a large urban bat colony living under the Congress Avenue Bridge. You can see these bats leave their roost to feed most evenings between Spring and Autumn, and so, looking for our own inspiration in nature we headed out to watch.

99.9% of people congregated around the Congress Avenue Bridge, but we liked the setback skyline view we were getting from one bridge over. Turns out, there’s a reason we were the only ones there: the bats are Mexican free tail bats that weigh less than 10g each, so even flocking en masse, they were almost impossible to see from our position. Still, we had a great chat and the weather was good and, technically, we saw see them so can tick that off the list 🤣