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Derek Jeter might have his favorite bat, but Ron Van Den Bussche has about 1,300.
Van Den Bussche began studying bats more than 20 years ago in 1985 while pursuing his doctorate at Texas Tech University.
“I think I have the best job in the world,” Van Den Bussche said. “Between my research and teaching classes and being out in the field, I love it all.”
Van Den Bussche is a regents professor of zoology and associate dean for research for the College of Arts and Sciences.
His passion is one which many around Halloween season would call simply batty, but he calls his research subjects members of Mammalia chiroptera.
“We don’t have another group of mammals that are so diverse,” Van Den Bussche said. “If you look at variations in their sheer size alone, they range in wingspans from tip to tip 2 inches apart and weigh about the same as a penny to a wingspan of 6-foot-6 inches.”
Loren Smith, professor and department head of zoology, said Van Den Bussche is a great scientist, a respected bat expert and internationally known.
“He’s an all-around good, hardworking scientist, not just with bats but also with amphibians, fish and birds,” Smith said. “One of the reasons he became a regents professor is because of his outstanding research.”
Van Den Bussche’s bat research has taken him far away from the laboratory. He has been through Mexico, Honduras, the Amazon and Russia to study the bat population.
He said on one research trip to Honduras, he and a group of his students went to a cave that was filled with yellow- beard bats. Van Den Bussche said this particular species of bats is one of the few that feeds off of blood, typically hanging in trees in order to bite people in the face or in the neck. He said the Honduran cook for the trip gave the group garlic to rub on the bottom of their pants to keep the bats off of them.
“The students asked me if I believed her and I told them, ‘Not really, but she’s still alive,’ ” Van Den Bussche said. “I had worn the jeans weeks in the jungle, and rubbing garlic on them most likely only made them smell better. No one got bit on the trip, so no harm in taking the local cultural advice.”
He said being out in the field brings many unique situations. He encountered a crocodile in the waters of the Amazon. His team has been researching in Mexico and political uprisings have run them out of town.
“I have had vast experiences collecting bats,” he said. “My research has given many opportunities to go unique places and it’s fun doing something I love.”
Van Den Bussche said people have grown attached to several untrue, but common, stereotypes surrounding bats. The most universal concern is a bat will fly into a person’s hair and get stuck, he said.
“I’ve been in caves with hundreds of thousands of bats, with the only exit being the size of a small door or window, and I have never once had a bat hit me or fly into my hair,” Van Den Bussche said.
He said many people are also afraid of vampire bats but there are many misconceptions involving the species. Van
Den Bussche said there are only three true vampire bats in the world and most of those occur in the New World, specifically Mexico and Central America. The farthest north the species has appeared is southern Texas.
“Most people have the giant bats from the ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ movie pictured in their head, but in reality, vampire bats are very small,” Van Den Bussche said.
However, Van Den Bussche said he understands why people have such a misunderstanding of bats.
“I had the exact same fears before I started working on them,” he said. “I have come to realize all of those myths and theories are unfounded.”
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What is he studying now?
Van Den Bussche said he hopes to conduct research on the Ozark big-eared bat in Oklahoma. He said his laboratory has been working on proposals for the research.
This research would address the “white-nose syndrome,” which has appeared in the Northeast U.S. He said the disease affects cave-dwelling bats and, when the disease appears in caves, it kills about 80 to 95 percent of that bat population.
“No one understands this disease yet,” he said. “But it could cause a big problem from an ecological standpoint because bats eat tons of insects every night. If there are far more insects and mosquitoes, that disruption could lead to far more problems.”
He said two years ago no one expected the disease to move south, but in recent reports, it has been moving farther south and west.
“We mostly want to focus on how we can protect the bats and get the baseline data if this moves into Oklahoma,” he said. “We simply want to take a proactive stance before it hits, just in case it does hit.”
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